


The Devil Is Fine

by SummoningDark



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, BilingualChewie, Drinking & Talking, Easter Eggs, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Everyoneisbisexualandyoucan'tstopme, Explicit Language, Family Drama, FrontmanFinn, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Mutual Pining, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Character Death, Past Drug Use, ReyBeingCompetentAsUsual, RiotGrrlRose, Rock Star Kylo Ren, Slow Burn, Tattooed Kylo Ren, actuallyit'smelodicmetalcoreDAD, whyyesthere'saplaylist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:22:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24835303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummoningDark/pseuds/SummoningDark
Summary: Rey Randall is the freshly-minted stage manager of Endor Music Hall, a concert venue that's been limping into bankruptcy since its heyday in the '80s under husband-and-wife managerial team Han Solo and Leia Organa. In between working overtime and supporting her best friend Finn's musical ambitions, she's developing a love-hate relationship with the band Nights of Ren...and its enigmatic front man. Even the most talented among us sometimes need to learn how to offer out a hand.The grungy Boston enemies-to-lovers metal AU you didn't know you needed.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 11
Kudos: 32
Collections: Ijustfellintothissendhelp





	1. Doors open in ten

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in this fandom. Comments are welcome!
> 
> Obligatory disclaimer that I don't know very much about the music industry. Or electrical work.

**Prologue:**

**October 11th, 2005. Manchester, New Hampshire.**

Rey wobbled on tiptoes, willing her small body to stretch taller and see over the heads in front of her.

“Don’t fall over, peanut. You can sit on my shoulders if you want when the bouncer looks the other way.” Finn grinned at her, another fifteen-year-old giddy with the thrill of making it into a concert with a fake ID on another dull Thursday night. Rey grinned back.

“I’m not that short! Metal fans are just tall.” She and Finn took up the sudden roar of the crowd as the band walked onstage. Four hundred hands surged into the air, propelling the smell of body odor, cigarettes and cheap beer into the air above them. 

First Order’s frontman extended his arms toward the crowd with a smile, wolfish beneath the grey wash of his corpse paint. 

“How the fuck are you, Manchester?” 

Seven hundred fans roared their approval into packed hall, the sound rushing out the doors and into the cold New Hampshire night. Yuri Smoke nodded in satisfaction, his bald head already dripping with sweat.

“That’s what I fuckin’ thought. One two, three, ha!”

First Order smashed into the drumbeat and power chord opening of their first song, their sound colliding with the bellowing of the crown like a runaway train. Rey jumped up and down, screaming at the top of her lungs, carried away by adrenaline and joy. Finn hollered beside her, throwing up one skinny arms in a set of horns. 

She knew she would be dragging herself through school tomorrow. She knew her foster father would ground her for a month if he caught her climbing in through the garage window after this. But this moment, the surge of the sweaty crowd around her, the feedback hammering in her ears, was all worth it. Rey screamed until her throat rasped, and moshed until her she knew her skinny elbows would blossom into purple bruises the next day. This was salvation.

Up onstage, she noticed that the band wasn’t playing with the same feverish joy they were getting from the crowd. Smoke paced back and forth, revving up the audience, but every so often he would drop the mic to gesticulate angrily at a guitarist or a backup vocalist. Rey noticed one singer not much older than herself give Smoke a piercing glare as the band leader swaggered back to the front of the stage. The young man gripped his guitar with a bitter reluctance, flicking a wave of black hair away from his too-large ears. When he leaned toward the mic, his mouth opened in a howl with the power of a wounded predator. 

Rey frowned, wondering why she wanted to hear more from this scrawny guitarist, and less from First Order’s decrepit reigning front man. Smoke flicked a hand toward the footlights, and pyrotechnics suddenly ripped her attention back to his face. 

Smoke’s eye roved over the crowd, his pale face demonic in the red wash of the fire below him.

Finn whooped louder at the theatrical finish, and Rey shivered.

\---

**Boston. Twelve years later.**

The ladder creaked under Rey’s feet as she leaned sideways to tighten the clamp on a fresnel. Dust from the massive stage light snowed onto her sleeves as she gave the safety cable a final tug and pocketed her wrench to climb back down.

From twenty feet below on the sticky floor, Han Solo continued to fret out loud. 

“I’m just saying, these guys better be good. You know Leia doesn’t have the best taste in metal bands, god love her, and with Arturo out for that audition—“

“Han, they’ll be great. I promise.” Rey hopped down from the final rung, lifted her dented travel mug off the floor and took a swig of coffee. The box office manager frowned at her from under his bushy grey eyebrows. “I’ve been going to metal shows for twelve years, and even if Finn wasn’t my friend, I swear to you I would still like this band.”

Han sighed theatrically. “I’ve had this pair of jeans for twelve years, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t holes in them. Hell.” Rey frowned at him, her freckled nose wrinkling. “I’m sorry, kid, I’ve just been a little uptight about our door sales lately.” Han stuck his scarred hands in his pockets and stared morosely up at the ceiling. A single flake of paint fluttered down and landed in his hair. “Truth be told…we’re a little tight.”

Rey sighed and drained the rest of her coffee. “Han, about that promotion. I really don’t need the salary increase right now if you—“

“Not a chance,” Han cut in. “You deserve every goddam bit of that. You’re not gonna be a martyr on my watch. Besides, stage managers never get paid enough anyway. If you decided to walk out and go somewhere else, you don't know if you’d get paid more.”

“But I won’t.” Rey smiled and thumped the shoulder of his leather jacket with her empty mug.

“But you won’t.” Han shook his head in disbelief. “Don’t know why,” he spread his hands, “but you haven’t so far.”

“It so happens I like not getting treated like shit.” Rey shouldered her bag of tools and sauntered off toward the green room. Han chuckled. “You’re okay, Rey.”

“I know.” She grinned and shut the stage door behind her. 

Leia Organa, general manager of Endor Music Hall, dressed in a silver-trimmed black leather corset, was opening up a trash bag on the other side of the room.

“Leia!” Rey burst out. “What are you doing taking out the garbage? Let me take that—“

“None of that bowing and scraping shit, Rey. I’ve got it.” Her eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “I have twenty minutes before I have to go judge that battle of the bands in JP and it seemed like the most useful thing I could do.”

“Are you looking forward to that?” Rey stooped to fish a pile of beer bottles from under the dressing room table. 

“Should be pretty good.” Leia held open the bag for her to drop them in. “Although emo is big again this year. I’m not too enthused about that. But it’s a paycheck.”  
She tied off the bag and set it down to hike up her corset over her cleavage.  
“I’m sorry I’ll be missing your friend Finn’s Endor debut.” 

“That’s okay. I’m hoping he’ll play well enough to play here again. Frequently.”

Leia laughed. “Arturo will have to be the judge of that while I’m out. Han has shit taste in metal bands.” Rey snorted and choked it back as Leia laid a motherly hand on her shoulder. “But if you recommended them, I’m sure they’ll be great.”

As Leia and Rey walked onstage, the yawn of a garage door announced the arrival of a truck to the loading dock. Rey looked at her watch. Forty minutes early for sound check. Finn and his friends knew how not to mess up an opportunity. 

“That’ll be them,” she called to Leia. “Have fun critiquing garage bands!” 

Leia rolled her eyes. “I’ll try. Break a leg tonight, Rey.” 

Rey waved until Leia was out of sight, then sprinted down the hallway that led to the back door, where a seven-piece band was hauling amps and cases inside. A powerfully built man with a cockscomb of locs had a split second to turn away from his guitar case before Rey squealed and launched herself into his arms. 

“Rey!” Finn’s voice was muffled by her shoulder. He plopped her back down onto her feet. “How’re you doing? How’s stage management? How’re ticket sales looking for tonight?”

“Whoa now, slow down, there, Finn. Let her breathe.” A slender woman with a bass case and a crown of brown curls smiled at Rey.

“Thanks, Jannah.” Rey gave her a small wave. Finn turned to his other bandmates in The Resistance, a motley collection of friends and fellow Berkelee alumni. He slapped Rey on the shoulder.

“Rey is now our stage manager,” he said, rolling the title around on his tongue like an auctioneer. “Recently promoted from production assistant.”

Rey waved a hand. “Hope it doesn’t show too much. Let’s get you all set up in the green room.”

While The Resistance crossed on- and backstage in a flurry of unrolled power cords and dragged sound equipment, Rey jogged up the steps to the mezzanine and into the sound booth. 

“I like a band who shows up early.” Arturo, Endor’s head sound engineer from the day it opened, nodded his shiny bald head in satisfaction at the musicians scuttling onstage below him. “This guy is your friend, right?” 

“Yeah. But I promise he got in on the strength of his audition, too.”

“He’s good.” Akbar, Endor’s light board op, crossed his arms over his faded Parliament Funkadelic t-shirt. “I never thought I would see a band that combined metal and spirituals.”

“And gospel,” added Arturo. “I looked them up on Spotify after I heard Han booked them and I have to say I’m excited.” He hopped out of his chair and stretched his bowed legs. The headphones pushed back over his forehead only came up to Rey’s collarbone. He grinned at her. “Isn’t it nice when your friends’ bands don’t suck?”

“Oh, they sucked for the first couple of months. But then they stopped trying to be imitate other people,” Rey replied.

“¡Oye, Arturito!” 

Arturo leaned over the edge of the sound booth. “Dime, Chucho.”

Chuy, Endor’s bouncer and Rey’s personal all-time favorite giver of bear hugs, stood in the audience area to call up to them. 

“We blew a fuse again. Pero it needs a new part. I think I have to go stick a nickel in it.”

Arturo groaned. “Again? Coño, which one?”

Chuy gave a massive shrug. “Just the bathroom lights. I’ll call the electrician tomorrow morning. Can you hold on a sec?”

“Okay. Ay, que pesa’o…hey there, Resistance,” Arturo spoke into the mic at his board. “Please wait one second before you plug anything else in. My friend the bouncer has to go down to the basement and check an electrical connection.”

“Got it, thank you!” Jannah called up to the booth. Finn and her other bandmates raised a thumbs up or waved.

Arturo sighed. “I swear to god, if I touch something and get fried one more time I’m making Han upgrade my health insurance.”

“I don’t like to say this, but it’s a firetrap,” Akbar muttered. “Good thing we don’t have curtains.”

“Can we hire that electrician for a few extra hours to do an inspection before the fire marshal comes this year?” Rey asked.

“We can if we sell a few dozen extra tickets tonight,” Arturo retorted. His face softened as he noticed Rey’s crestfallen expression. “Which we could,” he added. “I don’t want you to spend your first six months as a stage manager wondering if we’re all going to go up in smoke. Literally or financially.”

Rey sighed. “I’ll remind Han to set aside budget for it. We can switch to a cheaper brand of vodka and save seventy bucks a week on house mix drinks.”

“Girl, do you run everything around here?” Akbar laughed. “You gonna take over from Han and Leia one day. Speaking of which, your lights are good to go. I’m gonna do a check after sound is finished so you can tell me if we need to adjust anything.”

“Thanks!” Rey was still self-conscious about her seasoned coworker’s willingness to program her lighting designs. Finn had insisted on her work for Resistance’s Endor debut, and Akbar graciously coached her on the board whenever she asked questions on a slow day. 

Once Chuy returned from the basement, Rey dashed back downstairs to check on the backstage setup. Sound check and light check passed uneventfully, the opening band showed up to run through their cues, and soon the first few audience members had begun to queue up outside the door.

Finn fretted backstage, bouncing in his scuffed checkerboard Vans.

“How’s the audience looking, Rey?” 

She popped her headset off of her ears and smiled at him.

“Looking good. We must have a hundred people out there already.”

“Yes!” Fin pumped his fist in the air. He took one of Rey’s hands from off of her clipboard. “I know how important this job is to you, and I really want this to go well.”

Rey gave her best friend’s hand a squeeze. “You’ll do great. I know you will. I gotta go check with Chuy on timing, but I’ll be back before you go on.” 

“Okay.” Finn turned away and started a trilling vocal warmup, shaking his hands to get the pre-show jitters out.

Rey walked through the stage door next to the booth, and crossed to find Chuy. 

The huge, bearded bouncer was checking IDs and stamping hands, moving quickly along a line of excited fans with shitkicker boots and candy-colored hair. 

“How are we doing, Chuy?”

He nodded in satisfaction, ponytail bobbing. 

“We’re good to go in ten, honey.” Rey gave him a thumbs up and popped backstage again. 

“Places in ten!” she called to the opening band, who were putting the finishing touches on makeup and black leather vests.

“Thank you ten!” came the answering chorus, and Finn offered a quick fist bump before handing her a bottle of water.

Rey took her place in the wings, exhaling slowly. She sipped on the water and peeked around the wall of the proscenium at the crowd in front of the stage.

This was nearly her favorite part. The moments before a band started, when the crowd still murmured excitedly and the drummer still fussed with the rug under the rhythm section. She glanced up at Arturo and Akbar in the sound booth, waiting for their “good to go” over her headset before she signaled to the opening band to take the stage. They walked out to a half-interested chorus of applause, then launched into their first song with a drum kick and a spiraling bass riff. The crowd caught the rhythm and began to nod as the lead singer fired the volley of a first verse into the microphone, and Rey settled back to keep an eye on her domain as their set found its groove.

She and Finn had come a long way from sneaking into bars and hitchhiking to concerts in rural New Hampshire. Making it from foster care to college in Boston had been the first step. Finding enough work to stay in the city while they attempted to make it in music and stage tech had been somewhere down the line of many steps. Red had assumed she would stick it out as Endor’s production assistant for a few years of limping along through less-than-profitable shows, until Wedge Antilles suddenly pulled the plug on Han and Leia and retired as stage manager. Finn was still landscaping in the summer and shoveling snow in the winter while his band climbed slowly through house party gigs and six-PM slots in bar basements.

But now, they were finally getting a shot at a real concert venue. A venue complete with a percentage of door sales, a merch table, and theatrical-grade sound and lighting equipment. Rey hoped that Endor would be the first step for Finn, Jannah and their bandmates to something better than mowing lawns every day and playing every night.

She signaled to Jannah as the opening band crashed into the final note of their closing song. As they thanked the crowd and walked off with their instruments, Jannah and the rest of Resistance’s rhythm section booked it onstage to quickly rearrange while Rey disconnected and reconnected amps and cables. Having actual roadies would be another perk of them having an actual livelihood, she thought as she flipped an extension cord into a neat electrician’s coil. 

She gave Finn’s shoulder a squeeze as she dropped the cord on its hook backstage. “It’s go time. Break a leg out there.” Finn nodded shakily. His locs were arranged in a fierce mohawk on top of his head, and black eyeliner hooded his eyes. 

“I got this,” he breathed. “I got this?”

“Oh my god, just go out. You’re gonna kill it.” Jannah materialized behind him and gave him a push, winking at Rey as she grabbed her bass. 

Rey signaled to Arturo and Akbar in the booth, and held her breath as the crowd cheered for The Resistance. The audience settled to a murmur as Finn, Jannah and the rest of the band tilted their heads toward the ground, and the drummer began a rhythmic clanking with an automotive chain on the hardwood floor. Finn took a breath that swelled his chest and lifted his chin to sing.

_Great God, the riverbed’s filled with blood  
Great God, the devil is due  
Great God, I don’t know why  
But I don’t believe in you…_

The chain’s thumping gave way to a searing drum fill, and the band launched into the hook of its opening number with a vengeance. Rey finally exhaled with relief as the crowd roared approval, and horns went up on hands across the floor. 

She flicked the button on her headset. “We’re gonna be okay, I think.”

“Girl, I know it. Will you get off the mic and let me do my job?” Arturo cackled at her over the walkie talkie as she rolled her eyes and switched it off again. 

Finn’s band kept the crowd’s energy high until the break after their first set, when Rey ran backstage for a round of high-fives before bounding upstairs to check on the booth and grab another case of water bottles from behind the bar. She had no idea how the opening band had managed to guzzle down two.

“Rey! You’re friends with this band, right?” Poe, the bartender, leaned toward her as he mixed a cocktail with one hand and banged open the cash register drawer with the other.

Rey hefted the case of water onto her hip. “Whose number do you want, Dameron?”

Poe made a noise of affronted disbelief and put one hand to his chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rey raised an eyebrow at him, and he sucked his teeth and ran a hand over his already perfectly coiffed hair.

“That lead singer. Is he straight?” Poe batted his eyelashes at her while taking a customer’s change and bumping the cash register shut with one hip. 

“Fortunately for you and unfortunately for him, he bats for both teams. But you have to talk to him yourself.”

“Score!” Poe whipped a can of beer out from under the bar and slid it along the polished surface toward her. “For later. For your troubles.”

“You can buy me one at the Cantina later if you’re that grateful.” Poe’s face fell. “I’ll introduce you.”

He cocked his head, weighing his options, then nodded in resignation.

“Ugh. I’ll accept that.”

“You better.” Rey bumped down the steps with the water and dumped it backstage in time for her to take her place in the wings to cue the second set. 

This time, she could relax enough to take her eyes off of Finn and look up into the fly space, where her lighting program was pulsing along with the music. A lime green wash was just flooding in to replace the purple as the crowd surged in time with Jannah’s driving bass line. Rey smiled fondly as Chuy waded into the mosh pit to pull apart a pair of men who were starting to shove a little too enthusiastically. No one really paused to look at the lights while an incredible band was blasting away in front of them, but she was particularly proud of the way that effect threw sinister shadows into the singers’ faces and trickled back over the audience. 

Her headset chirped, and Chuy came on as he walked back into the hallway from across the venue. 

“Rey, this is their final number, right? Not doing an encore?”

“We’ll see. But this should be the end.”

Rey crossed her fingers as the final chord reverberated over the hall and Finn raised his hands at the crowd. They didn’t yell quite loud enough to welcome the Resistance back, but clapped and cheered lustily enough to satisfy Rey’s pride. Finn bounded backstage and enveloped her in a sweaty hug as the audience began to toss their beer cans into the bins and shuffle out of the hall.

“That was so good! Rey, thank you, thank you, thank you for getting us this gig!” 

Rey unsmeared secondhand makeup from her forehead and grinned at him. “The way that went, you’re going to be coming back for another one!”

“I hope so.” Finn pulled a bandanna out of his pocket and mopped at his face. “Want to go celebrate with us at the Cantina?”

“Of course. I’ll help you strike.”

Rey always marveled at how much ass a thirsty band could haul. In less than half an hour the Resistance’s gear was stowed in their van, and Chuy and Arturo were standing by the door waiting for her and Finn to arrive with the keys. 

Arturo walked up to Finn and stuck his hand up for a bro hug. “Congratulations, my man. You played a hell of a show.” 

Finn leaned down to thump the smaller man on the back. “Thank you. I was told you’re the man to see for metal around here, so that means a lot.”

Arturo waved a hand magnanimously. “That’s just because our booking manager is too much of a prog rock guy. Speaking of which.”

Han clicked the door of the box office shut behind him. He turned toward Finn and Rey and smiled. “Not bad, kids. 272 people, which means $2,012.80 for you.” He handed a freshly printed check to Finn, whose eyes were wide amid his smeared makeup. He gave a loud whoop. His bandmates clapped and whistled behind him, and he raised the check in the air.

“Drinks on our own hard work, guys!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the bands in this story are based on real musicians.
> 
> Finn and the Resistance are an homage to the incomparable Zeal and Ardor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB4nXQWyAug). The title of this fic also comes from their music.
> 
> First Order is based on Cradle of Filth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp_jsTAO9JU).
> 
> More to come!


	2. Mic check

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the swift comments and kudos!
> 
> Here, we finally meet Kylo and his infuriating bad-boy smolder. Thanks to everyone who didn't throw up their hands when he only barely appeared in chapter one.

**Two weeks later.**

Rey craned her neck to see around a row of massive bearded men in front of her.  
“I’m not sure I expect much. Wasn’t he just a background vocalist in First Order?”  
“Yeah. Just came up to the mic and screamed on a few songs.” Finn pulled a face and scratched the fade on the side of his head. “If it blows, at least the opener was good.”

She took a swig of her lukewarm beer and glanced into the concert hall’s fly space. _Five intels, two new ones stage left, those motorized barn doors that I would kill for…._ One of the unlikely (and least interesting, in layman’s terms) perks of going to so many concerts here was being able to play “spot the difference” with Corellia’s swanky lighting setup. Rey didn’t understand why Akbar had spent more than twenty years without arguing for better equipment. Although, half of this probably hadn’t been invented back when Endor was making reasonable amounts of money. And back before Leia found the LSD slush fund and cut it out of the official budget. 

The Nights of Ren were slow to come out. She shook her head sympathetically as the runner ducked furtively out of the curtain legs and gestured to someone offstage.

At that moment, a tall, muscular drummer swaggered out from the opposite side of the stage. Her silvery blonde mohawk bobbled gently under the lights as she flopped down in front of the drum kit. A few cheers went up, and she waved a stick at the crowd and rolled her eyes. 

She threw a casual flick at the snare drum that cascaded into a pounding tattoo. More audience members took up the cheering as the rest of the band walked onstage to her beat, led by a skinny guitarist with a Mick-Jaggeresque froth of red hair held up by a bandana. 

The lead singer and guitarist was last to walk out. Kylo Ren gazed out impassively like a general reviewing his troops as the crowd shrieked and pounded its feet on the floor. 

He wasn’t gargantuan, but he was tall, Rey supposed. The breadth of his shoulders made him fill the front of the stage as he idly lifted his red Gibson and tossed off a triple strum like a flamenco player. 

The drummer counted off with a click of her sticks, and the Nights of Ren slipped effortlessly into the deafening power of their first set.

Finn nodded approvingly as the shimmering layers of guitar lines washed over the hall and Kylo Ren began to sing. His voice swooped and growled like a panther’s yowl, occasionally reaching an operatic timbre in the lower registers that made the hair rise up on the back of Rey’s neck.

The Nights sped straight into their second and third songs without stopping, pulling out the stops out on electric violins, cascading bells and deft percussion. Rey had to admit she was impressed. She barely registered the pulsing blue of an unimaginative, but driving, light show above her.

Kylo Ren turned in profile to draw out a long howl, aristocratic nose jutting out above the white snarl of an indulgent mouth. _Why does he look so familiar?_ Finn was right; Kylo Ren had been a nonentity in the early days of First Order. (Well, Ren’s early days. The band’s real early days were back in the ‘80s, when Smoke still had hair and wasn’t a completely calcified asshole.) Rey squinted at the tattoos on his neck, the black hair flowing around his face and down to his shoulders. 

The roar of the crowd went decidedly up in pitch as Kylo Ren ripped down the front of his black shirt, revealing a craggy row of abs slick with sweat and patterned with skulls and ravens.

 _Oh,_ thought Rey.

Finn pulled a face and adjusted one foam ear plug in vain at the shrieking around him.  
“Dude, really? Can’t keep your shirt on until the end of the first set?”

The eight-pack clinched it. There were a few new tattoos, but suddenly she remembered where she had seen those abs.

“Finn!” she hollered over the noise. ”Do you remember that shitty band that you got that CD of from Jannah in, like, 2012? The one with the bloody suit on the front?”

“Knockoff Bullet for My Valentine? Damn, what were they called? Tie Fighting. Why?”

Rey leaned into his ear to be heard over the guitar fill. “Kylo Ren fronted them, too!”

Finn frowned at Ren as he gyrated in the tattered remains of his shirt. His eyes popped.

“Oh, shit! He totally did! God, they were awful. Didn’t you see them once?”

Rey nodded, and grimaced as she drained the last dregs of beer.

Strictly speaking, she had _heard_ them. Tie Fighting had been the second opening band at a short-lived festival when Snap had briefly got her a string of bouncer shifts for some extra cash in college. 

As the smaller, scrappier bouncer, Rey had been posted at a back door to the venue. Her night consisted mainly of hours of watching rats scuttle over the dumpsters and the occasional blast of music when someone opened the door to take a smoke break. 

She was debating taking up smoking herself just to relieve the boredom when a rangy young man strode up to the door and seized the handle without meeting her eye.

“Whoa, whoa, hold on.” Rey put out a hand to stop him. “I’m gonna need to check your ID.”

“What?” He scoffed. “Why? Move, I need to get in.”

Rey’s eyes narrowed. “This is a twenty-one-plus show and you’re trying to get in through the back door. And why are you shirtless?”

The man threw his hands up. “Because I’m the fucking talent. Now quit fucking around and let me in.” Rey flipped the lock on the door, and he punched the metal level with her face with a force that made her clench her teeth. 

“Show me your ID,” she said, her voice steady, “and I will.”

She had lived with too many men throwing wild punches at the walls in foster care. It used to scare her, but now it just made her see red.

Her resolve curdled in the pit of her stomach as the man planted his hands on the door and bracketed his muscular arms on either side of her head. His dark hair swung toward her face, and his smoldering eyes burned in the bloody shadows of the Exit sign above her. Rows of silver piercings tinkled softly in his ears. A single bead of sweat curled in the hollow between the arches of his collar bone.

“I said,” he whispered, “I need to get in. Now. My band is about to go on, and a lot of pretty girls like you will be disappointed if I don’t. Now move aside, you self-important little—“

He sucked in a gasp and snatched his hands from the door. Rey’s bulky ring of keys protruded from her knuckles, where the cold tip of a bottle opener and two master keys had prodded him in the gut.

“Oh, excuse me,” said Rey tonelessly. “I was just getting out my keys to unlock the door. If you show me your ID, I can finish doing that for you.” 

He backed up a step. The pale planes of his chest had broken out in white goosebumps. Rey was surprised to see his lower lip tremble. He took a breath.

“I’m Kylo Ren. I’m with Tie Fighting.” He pulled an official pass marked K. REN, PERFORMER out of his back pocket and shoved up a pile of black rubber bracelets to reveal an orange festival wristband.

Rey decided it wasn’t worth the energy to ask for a driver’s license. She jammed a key into the lock, wrenched open the door and held it open with one patched combat boot. She crossed her arms over her chest.  
“Go. You’re on in five.”

Kylo Ren drew himself up to his full height and brushed her shoulder as he entered the building. She listened to the clomp of his boots for a moment before he turned back toward her. His pale face glimmered in the darkened hallway.

“You’re a shitty bouncer. You need a teacher.”

Rey slammed the door. Her back slid down the rough metal surface until she collapsed in a heap, her head resting on her kneecaps.

After a minute, a squeal of guitar distortion pealed through the crack under the doorframe. Rey propped it open with rock and listened as Tie Fighting began to play.

They were garbage. Couldn’t keep time, bass turned up way too high. But the lead singer’s voice rang high and pure above the clash, too good for the band thrashing underneath him. 

Rey pulled the rock out of the door and threw it at a dumpster. A rat scampered out and glared at her accusingly before skittering off into the darkness.

_Yep, still has the nipple piercings,_ she thought as Kylo Ren leaned toward the crowd and stretched his hand out over the sea of bodies.

Finn stood with his head thoughtfully to one side. “These guys are way better than Tie Fighting ever was. Looks like he found an all-new lineup.”

“Uh-huh. I’m going to go to the bathroom.” 

Rey simmered internally as she maneuvered through the crowd and joined the end of the restroom line. He was bigger. More built. Had a more powerful command of his voice. Sounded like he had upped his range by at least half an octave. But underneath the admittedly talented braggadocio, she had no doubt he was still the same arrogant asshole.

Although, that female drummer was promising. Maybe she was whipping him into a less misogynist shape. _And he’s hot,_ added a treacherous part of her brain. Rey squashed that thought. He probably had hordes of squealing groupies to pick from every night. Or maybe that ripped drummer handcuffed him to a hotel bed and slapped him until he promised to be a good boy.

Rey smirked at that thought.

 _That could be you,_ returned the treacherous part of her brain, and the smirk slid off her face.

When she came back, Kylo Ren had put on a new black t-shirt, and the blonde drummer was ripping into a fill that had the audience screaming and clapping along with her. 

Rey turned to Finn. “Do you want to stay for the whole show?”

He looked surprised. “I mean, I thought we would. They’re really good. But if you’re not feeling up for it we can go home a little early.” 

Rey shrugged. “I can stick it out.” The crowd erupted as the drummer ended the song in a flourishing crash, and Ren lifted his hands toward the audience in applause for her.

After a short pause to adjust tunings, the keyboard player started a piano solo that Rey was surprised to recognize as “The Sound of Silence.”

Kylo stepped up to the mic.

_Hello darkness, my old friend…  
I’ve come to talk with you again…  
Because a vision softly creeping…_

Rey felt her mouth fall open.

_Left its seeds while I was sleeping,  
And the vision  
That was planted in my brain  
Still remains  
Within the sound  
of silence…_

_In restless dreams I walked alone…_

Kylo Ren dipped deep into the lower octaves of his range, reaching for a molten, liquid sound that was far from his usual piercing wail. A cello softly rose behind him.

_And in the naked light I saw…_

This was powerful training. This was practically choir boy. It was the most beautiful sound Rey had ever heard rising from a human throat. She was surprised to feel her eyes welling with tears.

Kylo Ren had kept his eyes closed and his hands wrapped around the mic stand, as if in a near-religious trance. His singing grew in volume and strength, and he began to spread his massive arms like darkly angelic wings.

_Fools said ah, you do not know,  
Silence like a cancer grows  
Hear my words that I might teach you  
Take my arms that I might reach you  
But my words  
like silent raindrops fell…_

The last verse tore from his throat with more of that familiar metal rasp, and the redhead answered it with a twining guitar riff. Sweat dripped from the ends of Kylo Ren’s hair as he gestured to the invisible sky.

_And the people bowed and prayed  
To the neon god they’d made  
And the sign flashed out its warning  
int he words that it was forming  
and the sign said the words of the prophets are  
written on the subway walls_

Beside her, Finn stood with tears streaming freely down his face. They listened together to the song of someone who had been deeply alone, and deeply enraged at the world around him, with no power to change it but the power of his voice. 

It crescendoed to a roar, then died to a whisper, the final _silence_ fading in a cascade of piano notes.

The roar of the crowd jarred Rey out of her reverie, the clapping and cheering suddenly incongruous with the reverence she felt the cover ( _holy shit, and that was a cover_ ) deserved. Kylo Ren wiped the sweat from around his mouth with one sleeve and ran a hand through his dark hair. 

Rey shook herself as the band launched into another thrashing song. “I’m going to go get another beer. You want one?”

“Uh. Sure, thanks.” Finn snuffled self-consciously and cleared his throat. “Man, my allergies are shit this year.”

Rey smiled at him. “It was a really good cover.”

Finn grinned reluctantly at her. “Don’t tell anyone. As far as you know, Kylo Ren did NOT make me cry.”

“Agreed.”

They stayed until the final number, and Rey didn’t mention leaving early again. When a maelstrom of cheering and whistling dragged the Nights back onstage for an encore, Finn tapped her on the shoulder and waved his phone, the time of the last train blinking on the screen. She nodded, and they began to work their way through the throng to the doors.

Rey couldn’t help looking back as Kylo Ren began to sing the opening song again, to the approval of the surging audience.

_If you’re gonna talk about sedating me  
Then you’re gonna learn what I can do  
I’ve exorcised futility  
The cannibal inside of me  
Is salivating over  
What freaks like me can do to freaks like you…_

His eyes roved over the crowd, momentarily blank despite the furor of his singing. Rey has the passing thought that it looked as though he were looking for someone. 

She paused by the exit, watching the crowd jump in time to the chorus.

_Freaks like me,  
Freaks like you,  
Freaks like me,  
Freaks like you_

Kylo Ren paused in his singing as the audience took over, and his eyes met hers from across the hall.

His shoulder stilled for a fraction of a second, and the second guitarist took over the line as his fingers went limp. 

Rey ducked and followed Finn out the door and into the night. 

The pounding of the final verse followed them across the street to the train tracks, and Rey felt the pulsing in her head all the way home as the rocking of the subway lulled her to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More music notes:
> 
> The Nights of Ren are a hodgepodge. A little Falling in Reverse (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdwotgtyCY8 ) , a Little Maximo Park ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0Z_8CsB-ls) , a little special Kylo razzle-dazzle.  
> Their cover of the "Sound of Silence" is based on this exquisite Disturbed cover ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Dg-g7t2l4). 
> 
> In case the train continuity was confusing, yes, Boston does have a wacky subway that travels both above and below ground. In Allston, where this story takes place, it's a rattletrap trolley-like appendage that runs down the middle of the goddamn street and stops at traffic lights. And it really does stop running at around 12:45 in the morning.


	3. End of the run

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SuRPriSe more backstory.
> 
> I don't want to weigh you nice people down with a concert description in every chapter. BUT, I have so many ideas for songs I imagine these characters covering that I might have to make a collection of Bonus Track ficlets. 
> 
> If you have any requests, put 'em in the comments!

**June 14th, 2017. 10:47 a.m.**

Rey waited, hands in her pockets, in the dark hallway behind the general manager’s office for Han and Leia to stop arguing. 

“Han, listen, these numbers aren’t something you can play with—“

“Who’s playing?! I’m serious, you need to call your brother and tell him—“

“You know I haven’t told Luke anything in thirteen years!”

“Well, we’re out of options! It’s time for him to cough up!”

“I’ll make you cough if you so much as—“

She cranked up the volume on her headphones and let out a sigh. This one sounded like it might be a while. 

Rey scuffed her feet along the water-stained carpet. She lingered along the row of dusty photos and awards that hung on the walls, the history that Endor’s audience never saw. 

A signed photo of Land Calrissian in full disco fro, with his glittering bellbottoms and dandelion-yellow cape. 

A newspaper clipping of Leia screaming into a microphone at a Reagan-Era protest, flanked by rows of shaggy-haired women hammering on electric guitars.

A dented wooden plaque with a picture of Han where somebody had pulled off the bronze nameplate and hocked it.

The last display was the one that always made Rey stop. 

Donny Vinton and the San Joaquin Skywalkers looked out from a glossy black and white photo locked behind dusty glass. A curl of his dark pompadour melted into his eyes, and one white hand thrust high into the air, guitar pick clutched in his fingers. His sneer lit a fire in the ranks of screaming teenage girls stretching their hands, like an encroaching horde, toward his pointed saddle shoes. 

“Creepy, id’n’t it?”

Rey jumped as Arturo appeared behind her. He chuckled. 

“I’d come back later if I was you. They’ve been at it all morning—dude, is that an iPod shuffle?”

The small man pointed incredulously at the tiny square connected to Rey’s earbuds. 

“I found it at a garage sale and fixed it up. Two dollars. But, Arturo—“ she lowered her voice to a whisper “—what’s happening?”

He shrugged. “Same shit, different day.”

“But they’re talking about her brother Luke,” Rey insisted. “I haven’t heard that name in a long time.”

Arturo’s face fell. He bit his lip, his eyes wandering past Rey and staring absently at the black and white photo between them. 

“Han hopes he’ll come back, lend us some cash, maybe play a show,” he said slowly. “Leia knows he probably just wants to stay on his ranch with his horses and rant about the government in peace.”

Rey paused. “Arturo, I know you and Luke are friends—“ he grimaced at her “—were friends.” She looked him hard in the eye, trying not to bend down. He hated that. “What do you think he’ll do?”

Arturo sighed. “Wish I knew, Rey. He’s always been a little unpredictable.” He considered the photo again, scratching his greying goatee. “You’d probably like him. He might be able to explain to you why some of this—“ he waved his short arms at the hallway, the office, all of Endor —“is so fuckocked.” 

Arturo reached up and gave Donny Vinton a short rap though the glass with his knuckles.

“This family has more problems than any of us needs, baby girl.” He looked up at Rey with something hard in his eyes. “Try to love them as best you can from the outside.” 

Rey watched his rolling gait take him out of the hallway and around the corner, just as she heard the door behind her bang open.

“Rey?” Han looked at her, nonplussed. “How long have you been there?”

“Longer than people who get in at noon!” snapped Leia’s voice from behind the desk.

***

Han and Leia mostly avoided each other that afternoon, Rey noted, as she cleared cables and hung lights for that night’s band. (“Don’t worry,” Akbar mutted darkly, shaking his head, his mocha-colored jowls shuddering like a turkey’s wattle. “They’ll make up and make out in the coat check later.”) 

Shortly before the headliner was due to arrive for sound check, Leia strode up to her. “Rey, I think you’ll like this band,” she began, starting to walk toward the loading dock. Rey tripped to keep up despite her six-inch height advantage. “They’re serious business. These are the women that won Battle of the Bands this year.”

“Yeah, CantoBlight. I’ve heard some of their stuff on Band Camp. Very Bikini Kill, in a good way.”

Leia nodded. “I was really impressed with their professionalism. I’m grateful you’re not easily intimidated.”

Rey quailed inside, but merely nodded as they arrived at the back. The garage door creaked open. Rey heard the clump of van doors closing, and two women walked inside.

Their matching serious expressions and arching cheekbones advertised them as cousins, or maybe sisters. The taller one, sporting a short black pixie cut and heavy gauges in her ears, stepped forward to gracefully take Leia’s hand as the shorter one turned to Rey. 

“Hi!” she chirped.

Rey blinked.

“I’m Rose Thi Cao!” She stuck out a hand adorned with mesh fingerless gloves and chipped purple nail polish.

“I’m Rey Randall. I’m your stage manager.” 

Rose’s face lit up like a Christmas tree with navy blue lipstick. “Leia told Paige and me so much about you! I’m really looking forward to working together.” 

“I’m looking forward to hearing you play," said Rey truthfully. "Leia said your Battle of the Bands show was amazing.”

“Aw, thanks!” Rose beamed. “We keep getting underestimated. It’s nice to be taken seriously.”

Rey was even more impressed during sound check, when she watched the soprano chirrup of Rose’s speaking voice turn into the deep growl of her singing. Raunchy, patriarchy-smashing lyrics hammered over the power of Paige’s keytar and Rose’s rhythm guitar playing. This was going to be a band to watch.

She was feeling pretty fired up when Finn texted her a few minutes before showtime.

_Heeeeeey I’m here_

_Can you sweet talk Chuy for me plzzzz_

_Srsly? he loves you_

Rey looked at her watch. She jogged around the side of the house and up to the front. 

Finn was just rolling up to the front of the line, his face wreathed in smiles.

“Chuy! How are you, my man?”

The big man rolled his eyes. “I’m good, jefe. Where's your ticket?”

Finn looked theatrically appalled. “What? I can’t ask ‘how are you’ anymore?” He flipped a piece of paper out of his back pocket. “And it's right here!”

Chuy shook his shaggy head balefully. “This time.”

“It was one…time.” Finn’s voice decrescendoed as the huge bouncer took a step toward him. Finn pointed at Rey. “And Rey was inside with my ticket.”

Chuy turned over his shoulder to look at Rey. She beamed an innocent smile, and he grumbled, but stamped Finn’s hand a little harder than necessary and waved him into the hall.

“Thanks, boss.” Finn reached up to slap Chuy on the shoulder, but snatched his hand back as he saw the look in his eyes. “Hey, Rey.” She gave him a quick side hug before he disappeared into the venue.

She turned to the bouncer.

“Chuy, you like Finn, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Good guy.”

“Then why do you always act like you’re going to rip his arms off?”

Chuy just exposed his wide jumble of teeth in a grin.

Rey rolled her eyes and went backstage to start the show.

After CantoBlight had thrown down harder than any two people had ever thrown down on Endor’s stage, and Rose and Paige had packed up and driven back to Providence with the speed of an oncoming train (not before Rose gave her a hug and a phone number and squealed “Thanks for everything!”) Rey and Finn sat in the Two Suns Cantina, nursing a pair of beers. 

“Poe asked about you again.” Rey poked the lime slice into her beer bottle with a popping sound and sucked the salt off the rim. 

“The bartender, right? He’s cute, but…a little intense.”

Rey shrugged. “That’s what I keep telling him.”

Finn leaned forward on his bar stool. “Rey, I have to tell you something.”

She felt a knot tighten deep in her stomach. “What?” She asked brightly.

Finn’s face shone. “I found a manager. She saw our Endor show, and she wants us to take the money we saved up for the studio recordings and go on tour.”

Rey smiled even as the knot dropped, her insides reeling. “That’s fantastic. When?”

“Four months from now.” He twisted one of the locs on the top of his head. “God, we have so much to do. Practice. Finish mixing the single. I have to tell the landscaping company I’m quitting.” He swiveled back to Rey. “And we wanna take your lighting designs on the road, if that’s okay with you?”

“Of course it’s okay! Finn, I’m so happy for you!” Rey gripped him in a tight hug, her beer sloshing in one hand. 

“What are we celebrating?” Cara Dune, the Cantina’s bartender, plunked two shots of tequila onto the bar top.

“I’m going on tour with Resistance!” 

“Alright!” She grinned, crossing her brawny biceps over her apron. “When do you leave?”

Rey felt strangely like she was falling backwards as Finn and Cara’s voices blurred in her ears. She smiled and high-fived as a small voice in her ear said _This is what you wanted. Isn’t it?_

_I just didn’t expect him to leave so soon, _she answered it pathetically, then cheered and downed her tequila with the others.__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Paige are a combination of [L7](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCZVRQ3z5qE) and [the Dollyrots](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wojWsgGi3gk).


	4. Feedback

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're looking for more musician AUs, I highly suggest checking out Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard's [Hanging on a Star.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22576447/chapters/56151262)
> 
> It was a big inspiration for the writing of this fic. 
> 
> And now, an unwilling meet-cute and some pining.

**October 5th. 7:40 a.m.**

Rey stared hungrily at the glass case of pastries before selecting a bear claw, shiny and studded with raisins. She paid for her coffee and danish, dumped all of her change plus a dollar into the tip jar, and stuffed a massive bite into her mouth. Less stringent meal planning was definitely one of the major perks of getting a promotion and a raise. 

The Outer Rim was quiet this morning, filled with local college students and old men sipping on small cups of espresso. The turning of newspaper pages barely rose above the Nina Simone playing in the background. Rey picked up a copy of _idiot’s array_ from the scarred counter and flipped through the local alternative weekly to see if they’d picked up Rose’s second concert at Endor. She crunched on another finger of her bear claw and started to read.

__

_CantoBlight is coming for the macho garage bands of Boston. This born-two-late riot grrl duo “has control of the cockpit now, and we’re loaded,” says co-frontwoman Paige Thi Cao. The band proved their mettle with a show at Endor Music Hall Thursday night, giving the limping Allston venue a crowd it hasn’t seen since Man Ray moved its annual goth night to Cambridge. With titles like “Fighting What We Hate” and “Just Like Your Father,” CantoBlight’s sharp-tongued songwriting has  
_

Rey spluttered as her forehead and her coffee cup collided with a broad chest. Scalding coffee slopped out in all directions and splashed her jacket, along with the stranger in front of her. 

“Ah, fuck, I am so sorr—-“

“Ouch, shit, watch where you—“

Hands flew, the bear claw flopped to the floor (mercifully on top of the soggy newspaper) and Rey stretched out her hand to swipe coffee off of the well-muscled Slipknot logo at eye level…

…before she realized she was looking into the stormy eyes of Kylo Ren. 

She snatched her hand back. He was dressed casually, in an off-duty uniform of rumbled black sweatshirt and black jeans, but the swirls of ink peeking out of his sleeves and shirt collar were unmistakeable. His hair was stuffed into a haphazard bun, and bruiselike circles of sleeplessness ringed his eyes. He was holding a perfectly intact syrup-swirled iced latte ( _Asshat_ , thought Rey) and glaring at her.

“Sorry, I should have been paying attention.” Rey squared her shoulders and picked up the bear claw and empty coffee cup. She folded the newspaper as crisply as possible. 

“That’s what lids are for.” She had expected Kylo’s speaking voice to be strident, even raspy, after all these years, but it came out in a pleasant and oddly penetrating rumble. 

Under the circumstances, she hated him for it.

“Yeah, looks like that one did a good job of protecting your five-dollar caramel whatever. Have a nice day.” Rey shouldered past him and grabbed a handful of napkins by the throat. She bent over and began rigorously mopping up her coffee, feeling an angry flush starting to creep up her cheeks.

Kylo Ren’s huge black combat boots clumped off out of her view. _Arrogant prick_ , Rey thought, grinding a wet handful of paper into the grainy floor. 

She was surprised when a fresh cup of coffee alighted on the floor by her feet, and a large tattooed hand reached down fastidiously to mop the spill next to her.

They cleaned in silence, until they’d worn a shiny circle in the floor’s original sticky funk and a wad of wet napkins was deposited in the trash. They stared each other down as Ren took a long pull on his straw.

“Is the bear claw still edible?” he asked.

Rey enjoyed the barely perceptible distaste in the line of his mouth as she took another huge bite.

“It’ll do,” she mumbled through almond paste. She gulped. “Thanks.”

He shrugged.

“I could have gotten that second cup, I mean…,” she went on, then trailed off, self-conscious. “You didn’t get burned, did you?” 

Rey glanced at Ren’s wet shirt, clinging to what she remembered was a clearly defined pair of pecs. She told herself it was just neighborly concern that made her follow the line of the wet spot down over a tight stomach and the top of a studded belt. 

He noticed her looking and stretched an arm up to run a hand sheepishly through his hair. A sliver of pale abs and dark hair ( _so that’s why they call it a happy trail, Rey thought_ ) peeked out. 

“It’s a dark shirt. And they don’t make very hot coffee here.”

Rey snorted. “Too true. But it’s better than the dishwater from the convenience store across the street. And Starbucks.”

“Mhm. Fuck Starbucks.” Kylo frowned and took another sip of his latte, gurgling it like a child with a milkshake. 

Rey felt absurdly like she’d gained some upper hand. She took a breath.

“You’re Kylo Ren, right?” 

His eyes flew open in furious panic. He grabbed her upper arm and turned to frog march her out of the cafe, but Rey ripped herself out of his grip.

“What the hell? Are you—“

“Don’t give me away here! I want to drink my coffee, not host a fuckin' fan meet-and-greet!” he hissed. Rey rolled her eyes in disgust. 

“No one cares. Look—“ She spun around and pointed at him theatrically. “Hey everyone!” she called to the Outer Rim customers. “It’s Kylo Ren!”

The old men blinked over their newspapers. One college student popped out a single earbud, then went back to her physics textbook. 

“See?” she continued at a more reasonable volume. “You’re not that famous.” 

She began walking out of the coffee shop. Kylo Ren, frozen and furious, paused for a moment in shock before striding after her. 

“Why the hell did you feel the need to prove it to me?”

Rey tutted at him. “So we can have a conversation like normal human beings.”

“Who says I want to converse with you?”

A part of Rey’s brain noticed the odd choice of verb and thought _hoity-toity bastard_. A separate part spotted a dark drip of coffee on one ample leg of Kylo’s faded skinny jeans and thought _crush me between those thighs_. 

She mentally stomped on that part. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, I guess ‘normal human’ was wishful thinking. Have fun ripping your shirt off and dicking around under the eyesore Disney techno lights with your ‘roided-up friends.” Rey shoveled the last of the bear claw into her mouth and turned on her heel.

“You don’t like my lighting design?”

Rey paused. She turned toward Kylo again.

“No. I don’t. I think it’s got a confused color palette and has no emotional build over the course of your show. It also doesn’t complement your song order.”

He blinked. “When’s the last time you saw me in concert?”

Rey sucked on her teeth. “A year ago. At Corellia.”

Kylo Ren lifted his eyebrows. “And you were paying that much attention to the lights?” 

“You didn’t utilize them. Corellia has at least five intels. Get somebody who can actually program them and you can add more effects than just strobing. Project your album art. Rake them over the crowd. Go for more red during your ‘Throne Room’ set.”

“You think red?” he said slowly.

“The pale blue isn’t working for you, thematically.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“So you do this professionally,” Kylo said.

“Partly.” Rey sighed. “I stage manage professionally, but the venue is so small I also design lights sometimes.”

“What kind of shows?”

“More and more metal and metal core these days,” said Rey, “but all kinds of things. Funk, goth, emo, occasional folk night, occasional DJ…we’re, ah, booking anyone we can at this point.”

“Who are your favorites?” He undercut the polite question by glowering and jabbing a massive finger in her direction. _So this must be him being charming_ , thought Rey, wondering at the sudden interest in her good taste.

“Generally? Nightwish. Lingua Ignota. The Hu. Falling In Reverse. The Resistance — they’re a local band, but they’re on tour now—“

“I just saw them in Minneapolis. They were good. Their lead singer knows his shit.”

Rey flamed internally with pride for Finn. “Yeah, he was in gospel choirs for years before he formed the band, so he can really bring it.”

“You know them personally?”

“We grew up together.” Rey tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and instantly regretted the sticky touch of cafe floor and bear claw on her face.

“Did you do their lighting design?” 

Rey paused. Kylo stared at her, his dark eyes somber and his face as still as an Easter Island statue. 

Rey took a measured breath to keep from laughing at the absurdity of her entire morning. “I did, actually,” she said. “I’ve been designing for them since before they went on tour. They were programming my work in Minneapolis.”

Kylo nodded thoughtfully. “Lots of red.”

“And purple.”

“And green. God, that lime green. I thought I hated it, but then suddenly it did that wash over the audience and it was perfect—“

“And you remember it!” interrupted Rey. “See? Good design makes an impact.”

Kylo screwed up his face in pained concession. 

Rey laughed.

Kylo Ren arched a single immaculate eyebrow. Maybe she’d miscalculated, but it felt good to laugh after so many minutes of sticky tension.

His mouth quirked up at one side, and his face bloomed into an array of dimples and laugh lines.

”I guess.” 

He sucked out the last of his iced coffee and dunked the cup into a curbside recycling bin. He carefully wiped the condensation from his hands on his shirt, then thrust them deep into the pockets of his jeans. 

“So you know my name,” he admitted. “What’s yours?”

“Rey Randall.”

“Are you from Boston, Rey?”

“I’ve lived all over. Mostly New Hampshire, and then here for the past ten years.” She scraped her brain for more small talk, the surreality of this conversation slowly starting to fade. “Where are you from, originally?”

“I grew up in Brookline, actually.” He gestured vaguely to their right, at the rooftops of the leafy suburb that brushed against Allston like a clean sheet thrown next to a pile of dirty laundry. “But now I live mostly in Oregon.”

“Why Oregon?”

He exhaled heavily. “It was as far away from here as possible without being California, which I already tried and didn’t like.”

“Ah. Allergic to sun? Or maybe allergic to chilling the hell out once in a while?”

Kylo Ren shook his head. “I never got to see that side of California. Too busy working.”

Rey flipped through her mental deck of music trivia. First Order was based in LA, until 2008, when disagreements broke up the band and Yuri Smoke died of a heart attack from an alleged overdose. Tie Fighting formed in 2011, broke up the same year, and the Nights of Ren formed only a few years ago in 2014, in an undisclosed location.

A fleeting look of indecision crossed his face. “So, are you on your way to work today?”

Rey glanced at her watch. “Oh, shit, I have to report in five minutes. Well, I always report early, so technically it’s twenty-five minutes…” she trailed off, wondering what direction this was going. “Are you…playing a gig? In town? Tonight?” She winced internally at her own excess question marks.

“No, just visiting a friend,” said Kylo hurriedly. “He gets up late, so I’m actually out for a morning walk. It’s been a while since I’ve been in Allston.”

“‘P.s., Allston rules.’” said Rey. Ren stared curiously at her. _Damn. Curb the nerd, Randall._ “That’s, um,—“

“—David Foster Wallace.” Kylo blinked. “Well, look, I don’t usually do this, but, ah—“ he pulled a phone with a spiderwebbed, cracked screen out of his back pocket. “If you promise not to alert the fangirls and fanboys and, I don’t know, fanthems? You could, uh…” He waved the phone in front of him like a baton, frowning.

_This is the single most awkward way any boy has ever asked for my number,_ thought Rey.

Kylo took a breath. “We should talk lighting design again sometime. I’m serious. I’m not gonna hire you on the spot, but that is something I’d like to improve about the touring show.”

He opened a new contact and extended his phone toward Rey solemnly.

Rey glanced around out of habit. _Is this a trap? Is he going to lash out at me if I say no? I kind of want to say no._

“You know what? Why don’t I just give you my business card. Then you have my phone and email and everything.” 

Rey undercut the professionalism of that statement by pulling out her homemade duct tape wallet on its chain and fumbling through a quarter inch of library cards, coffee punch coupons, and miscellaneous receipts before unsticking a card with one almond-glaze—besmirched finger. She braced herself for Kylo’s disappointment.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, but shut it and nodded. 

“Great. That’ll be perfect.”

“Great.”

“Awesome. Thank you.”

They nodded at each other, like adults. 

“Well, I should let you get to work.” Kylo Ren nodded, and Rey strained to hear over the traffic for what might have been a sigh. 

“Have fun with your…friend. And the visit.” Rey wondered if it would be too much to start walking slowly backward.

“Yeah. Give my regards to The Resistance.”

“Oh I will.” He gave a small wave and turned off down the sidewalk.

She watched his lithe walk thoughtfully for a moment.

“Kylo?” Rey watched him spin and look furtively around with a small, malicious joy. She tapped her cup.

“Thanks for the coffee.”

***

**Three days later.**

Late in the afternoon, Rey lay on her stomach, texting Finn.

__

__

__

_How’s home, peanut?_

_Meh. No bands this weekend, so we’re deep cleaning : P . Miss you. How’s Raleigh?_

_Siiiiiiick but I’m ready to go on the West Coast leg after this_

_That Cali sun is CALLING me_

Rey tossed her phone onto the bed and wondered what to do with her free night. Normally, she and Finn might watch a movie, or hop across a few neighborhood bars. Or make pancakes for dinner. A creeping feeling in her stomach told her that maybe if she’d make more of an effort to make friends, maybe she wouldn’t be so lonely when one went on tour. 

The sounds of her roommate chopping vegetables and clanking their lone frying pan filtered in from the kitchen. Rey briefly entertained the thought of asking Kaydel to join her for a walk, then decided it wasn't worth it. The chore wheel and monthly rent texts were all the communication she could handle.

She hadn't told anyone about meeting Kylo Ren. She still didn't know what to make of it. So far, avoiding thinking about it had been her main way of passing the time outside of work.

But laying on the bed feeling mournful wasn’t going to entertain her for long. 

She rolled over and picked up her phone again to check the local concert listings. 

Nothing at Starkiller. Nothing at Nerf Herder’s. Nothing at Kessel Run, at least not for those prices. Rey reached for the bag of cheddar goldfish on her bedside table and crunched as she surfed. 

Suddenly she found a worthy option: General Grievous was playing at Crait Rock Club at eight o’ clock. 

Swedish power metal with bagpipes? Doable for a Wednesday. 

Rey looked at her watch. Quick shower, spoonful of peanut butter for dinner, train, and she could just make it for the last few minutes of the opener. She folded up the bag of goldfish and grabbed her towel from the hook behind the door.

An unknown number texted her while the green line train rumbled around a curve. 

_Hello._

Sinister.

_I realized I should give you my number since I have yours._

Rey frowned. Was this that cute dog walker Poe had threatened to introduce her to last week? 

Oh no. 

__

_This is Kylo, by the way._

After three days? Weird, but okay.

But thinking it was weird would imply she had been disappointed not to get this text earlier, and Rey wasn’t willing to admit that even in the privacy of her mind.

She bit her lip, and slid her phone into her pocket without answering. Let him stew for a while.

_That’s ridiculous,_ commented a very reasonable-sounding voice in her head, _Since you don’t have any feelings attached to this whatsoever._

_Thighs,_ whispered a slightly less reasonable voice. _Happy trail. Dimples._

Rey shook herself and hopped off the train. 

A crisp breeze ruffled her hair and drove her hands deeper into her pockets. She walked over the lumpy sidewalk for few blocks, ducking against the wind, until a friendly bearded face greeted her outside Crait’s double doors.

“Rey Randall! How’s it going?”

“Snap! It’s good to see you!” Snap Wexley folded her into a quick, warm bearhug that knocked the bouncer’s earpiece from his face. 

“Good show tonight, Rey. Grievous is touring with that double-necked guitar guy that plays like he has four arms.”

“From their studio album? Nice.” Rey pulled out her wallet, and protested as Snap waved it away. 

“You’re good, Rey, you’re good. Just wave your ID at me and I’ll give you a wristband.”

“Are you sure?” Rey sighed. “Endor’s not in a great place to comp you back right now." She straightened up. "But, I am, so make sure you get Chuy to find me the next time you come to a show.”

“I totally will.” Snap looked sad. “I hear Endor’s struggling a little bit right now.”

Rey shrugged. “We’ll get by. I’m told Han doesn’t hide the money in the radiators anymore.”

Snap laughed. “My dad said Leia bamboozled him out of that one before we were around. I believe it.”

He slapped Rey on the back and waved her in as a group of concertgoers walked up behind her. Rey pushed open the heavy door and exhaled as the wall of sound hit her. 

The opening band was decent. Rey glanced up briefly at a singer howling in what sounded like Latin as she made her way over to the bar and ordered a can of PBR. 

Crait Rock Club had a slightly smaller footprint than Endor, but it made up for it with a wide, concrete cathedral of a concert space. Rey began scoping out the less jam-packed areas along the back and took her beer in hand to claim a spot near the wall. 

Years of concerts and industry work had trained Rey to hear her own name over the deafening roar of the speakers. As she wove her way toward her chosen spot, a slight disturbance in the wall of thrashing guitars made her turn.

“Rey?”

Kylo Ren stood a few feet away, silhouetted by a halo of purple light from the stage. 

Rey’s beer nearly slipped from her grasp.

But she caught it.

“Hey!” she squeaked. He ducked around a trio of concertgoers and came toward her.

“What are you doing here?”

Suddenly she felt on surer footing.

“I’m…going to a concert. Are you just here for the atmosphere? Is there a spy plot I don’t know about? Don’t tell me it’s the beer.”

He looked momentarily crushed.

Before she could backpedal, a skinny man Rey recognized as the Nights of Ren’s guitarist materialized behind Kylo’s shoulder.

“Dude, where the hell did you wander off to—? Oh. Hey.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Who’s this?”

“I’m Rey.” She lifted her chin defiantly.

He stared at her impassively for a moment, then stuck out a skinny hand.

“Hux. What’s up.”

Rey shook if, firmly but without enthusiasm, as Ren started to mumble awkwardly beside her.

“She’s…we met…actually, she’s the stage manager, at, where—where did—?”

“Hey guys.” The blonde drummer from the Nights of Ren strutted up behind Hux and rested a brawny elbow on his shoulder. She jerked her head at Rey. “Hi, I’m Bri.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Rey Randall.” The pleasantry fell flatly out of her mouth. _Gang’s all here now,_ said the treacherous voice in her head in oddly sullen tones. She wondered why she was so ticked off that Kylo Ren was no longer alone, but filed that thought away to compartmentalize later.

“Do you two know each other?” Bri asked, jerking a black-nail-polished thumb between Hux and Rey.

“No,” they said in unison, with what Rey felt was a touch too much outrage on Hux’s part for her liking. 

“We met at a coffee shop yesterday and started talking.” Kylo Ren said it so softly he needed to shout it one more time over the music for Bri to comprehend. Her blue eyes lit up.

“Aw, Ben! You made a friend!” She cackled and slapped Hux on the back. “You owe me twenty bucks, bitch.”

Rey found herself laughing in surprise. “Does he not make friends often? And —Ben?” She blinked at Kylo Ren. “Is that a nickname?”

“That’s his real name,” said the drummer, running a hand through her mohawk and turning a conspiratorial smile to Rey. “We all have stage names. Like, I’m Phasma with the Nights, but offstage I’m just Bri. He’s only Kylo when he has to be. And Hux is— “she chuckled. “You wanna tell her, buddy?”

He made a childishly sour face. “No. I don’t.”

“Alright, fine. Have it your way.”

Rey geared herself up to make small talk. “Ky--Ben--you said you were just visiting. Are you guys on a road trip together?” 

Phasma looked puzzled. “Well, I visited my family in Norwood, but primarily we were here shooting a music video. Finished up yesterday.” She turned to her bandmate. “I hope it’s okay that I’m telling her that.”

“Yeah, I just didn’t want to sound like a pompous ass.” Ben shrugged. “I really did visit a friend. He lives in Beacon Hill,” he added, casually dropping the name of the richest area of town like it was an easter egg rolling under a bush.

“Speaking of pompous ass!” Phasma shot back. 

Rey found herself laughing even more, grudgingly charmed. 

It was easier than she thought to slip into camaraderie with the three of them. She learned the music video was for a new single, and had taken them down into the crypts of the Old North Church, for, as Hux drily put it, “corpse paint with real corpses.” Afterwards, they’d wandered around the Common eating arepas and soft pretzels, which launched Rey into a dissertation on her favorite food trucks and where to track them down on a given day of the week. 

Even Hux softened up after a few drinks, enough to tell Rey that the shameful name he had left behind for the big stage was Armitage Huxtable. (“Shut up, Phasma,” he snapped as she howled with laughter, her platinum mohawk jiggling. “It gets me every time,” she cackled into Rey’s ear.)

Phasma and Hux said their goodbyes after the end of Grievous’ first set, pleading a long day, and Rey braced herself for the awkwardness of the two of them being left alone. But things were surprisingly companionable. 

It helped that the din in the concert hall made it hard to talk.

They nodded along to a few songs in silence, gripping their beers like slippery lifelines, until Ben coughed awkwardly and scratched the back of his neck.

“Rey, the more we hang out, the more you look familiar. And I wanted to say, I think I was a royal dick to you, a long time ago. And in case it’s worth anything, I’m sorry.”

Rey stood in open-mouthed surprise. A Swedish backup choir howled incongruously in the background.

“You’re remembering when I was a bouncer,” she said slowly, “and you were still in Tie Fighting.”

He winced at the memory, or maybe at the band name.

“Yes. The way I intimidated you that night, was….unforgivable, and…” he held her gaze, imploring. “And it’s something I’ve spent the last few years working on never doing again.”

He stared into his lightened beer can, soft lips parted, and raised it to drain the last drops. 

“So, again, you may be past caring, but. Again. I’m sorry.”

The Swedish howl finished, and General Grievous finished their song with a punishing drum kick.

“I do care,” Rey said softly.

“What?” Ben shouted over the explosion of applause.

“I do care!” She leaned into his shoulder to shout into his ear, and shivered as her lips brushed a sliver of flesh between his earrings. “Thank you for saying it!”

His face collapsed with relief. He just nodded, and tucked his beer can under his arm to clap for the band along with the rest of the crowd. Rey joined him, thinking of the tiny signs that this man had done some growing since that night they both remembered. _Not all rockers go to hell_ , as Leia would say.

Snap opened his mouth to greet Rey as she walked through Crait’s doors, but he clammed up when he saw Ben next to her. He laid a finger on his bouncer’s earpiece as if listening, and gave her a subtle wink once Ben was looking in the other direction. Rey rolled her eyes and tried for a one handed pantomime of _me with this hot stranger is not what you think it is_ , but Snap just chuckled quietly and turned back into the crowd.

The October air was a balm after the humid closeness of the concert hall, and Rey lingered a moment before shrugging on her sweatshirt and leather jacket. 

Ben stood on the curb with his hands in his pockets, his head tipped back to let the fall breeze cool his face. He bit his lip, as if weighing a decision, then turned to Rey. 

“You wanna go get a drink?”

She laughed.

“You really haven’t been back in a while. Everywhere here closes at two. Or one.”

“Dammit!” he swore more sharply than she expected. “Well, we could…go for a walk?”

She nodded, slowly. “Yeah, we could do that. There’s not many nice places to walk around here, but, sure.“

“I’ve got an idea.” The ghost of that smile played around his lips. “There’s at least one place around here I do remember.”

Even thought she was only two beers in, Rey felt oddly weightless. The flighty joy of being with someone new, walking through near-silent neighborhoods in the small hours, did its best to outweigh the wariness of tromping around in the dark with a big strapping man she was pretty sure she’d hated three days ago.

That weightless joy started to wear thin after what felt like the second hour of walking uphill.

“Ben, where are we?” Rey huffed, unzipping her sweatshirt as she marched double-time to keep up with his colossal strides up the steep sidewalk. 

“Almost there, I promise. Ha!” He grabbed her hand to stop her in front of a tiny metal sign reading COREY HILL OVERLOOK. 

A winding set of stone steps disappeared into the hillside.

“Is this someone’s backyard?” Rey whispered.

“It’s a public thoroughfare.” He let go of her hand and began sprinting energetically up the staircase, massive shitkicker boots thumping on the stone.

Rey groaned and ran straight up after him.

The path up the hill was surprisingly well lit. Streetlamps gleamed on twisting iron railings; the stairs doubled back around garden walls and zigzagged upward past the shingles of looming Victorians, in whose hushed windows the curtains were drawn and dark. Not even a dog barked.

It was nearing three in the morning as Ben and Rey mounted the last rise of stairs and popped out into a narrow alley lined with ivy-covered wooden fences.

Rey hesitated. She discreetly shoved a hand into her pocket and grasped her keys, wondering how hard the old people of Brookline would be to wake up if any of this went south and she had to scream. 

But Ben had already dashed ahead of her and emerged on an empty street.

Rey walked out of the alleyway, past a moonlit playground and across the deserted street to a grassy knoll.

In front of her, the lights of the entire city of Boston twinkled across the faraway river, like a fallen chandelier. 

They simply stood in silence for a moment.

When Rey turned to Ben, he was already watching her, the skyline lights shimmering in his eyes. 

“Ben, this is…breathtaking.”

He gazed out over the city. “I used to sneak out of my parents’ house and come here at night, to think about things. I’d forgotten how much I missed it.”

“I didn’t even know this was here.” Rey squinted, and spotted the red triangle of the Citgo sign, blinking slowly on and off amid the city’s stars. “Guess I don’t know this city as well as I thought.”

“Brookline has 14 secret paths like this.” Ben lowered himself to a seat on the grass. “Some of them are longer, some of them are shorter. Most of them are not this uphill.”

Rey sat down beside him. “Secret? Have you found them all?”

“You can look them up on a map, but I’ve never wanted to.” He shrugged. “But yes, I’ve found them all.” He looked up at the full moon peeking between the maple trees. “This one is my favorite."

They sat for a moment, listening to the whisper of the wind in the trees.

“Do your parents still live around here?” Rey asked.

“Somewhere. We don’t talk anymore.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing awful. They just fought a lot. Were too busy with work. Got divorced. They didn’t like that I went off and got myself recruited by a band when I was so young, even though they were both musicians. We didn’t see eye to eye.” He sighed. “Then, lo and behold, I heard they got back together a couple of years ago. I tend to think they’re happier without me.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why would anyone be happier without you?” 

He raised his eyebrows at her bluntness. 

“I’m guessing you have a normal family?”

“What’s normal?” Rey flopped onto her back on the grass. 

Ben slowly eased himself onto his elbows next to her.

“A mother and father who love you. Or one parent. Or two moms. Grandparents, an uncle, whatever. Something.”

“Nope.” Rey popped the ‘p.’ “Foster care. Nearly fifteen years.”

She braced herself for the pity, the outrage, any of the usual tired reactions. 

“Huh,” he said.

She waited.

“My grandpa was like that. Of course, it was partly time in orphanages back then. And my mom and uncle were both adopted.” He turned his face toward her and laid his cheek on the grass. “Guess I should rethink my assumptions.”

“Don’t give up on the family you’ve got, either. Lots of people’s parents get divorced.” She watched as the night wind trailed a strand of hair across his face, and he brushed it away. “Hope you have some chosen family you appreciate, in the meantime.”

“I do. Do you?”

“Yeah.” Rey felt the wind tugging wetness from her eyes. “My best friend slash foster brother is on tour right now. I’ve come to realize how much I rely on him.”

“The one from Resistance.” He smiled gently at her look of surprise. His huge eyes swallowed up the twinkle of the city lights and reflected it back at her, dancing in their depths.

“Good memory,” she said softly. 

For a moment, they just stared at each other. 

He reached out one arm, and started to tentatively stroke her hair. Rey closed her eyes. 

The gentle scratch of his nails on her scalp felt like warm water, tingling where it soothed. She breathed in the dusky scent of fall leaves, the hint of sandalwood rolling off him as he shifted slightly toward her on the grass.

She remembered the feeling of trusting another person enough to do this.

His callused thumb wandered over her cheekbone.

She remembered the feeling of her head hitting the metal door nearly five years ago.

Rey inhaled sharply and sat up, and Ben snatched his hand away, startled.

"What's wrong?" 

"I remembered how late it is. I should be getting home. Work in the morning, and all that."

"Okay," was all he said, softly.

Rey stood up and briskly brushed the leaves from her legs. Ben rose slowly to his feet.

"Can I walk you home? Or call you an Uber?"

"I'll be fine on my own, thanks," said Rey firmly. "I walk everywhere."

"Okay." He glanced around, at a loss. "Well, I'm, uh, happy we ran into each other."

"Yep." Rey nodded rapidly. "And I did get your text. So, we can, uh, talk more. Sometime." 

"I hope so." Ben looked sadly at her. "Well. Goodnight, Rey."

"Goodnight." She gave him a smile that didn't reach her eyes, and began to walk away.

When she gave in to the temptation of looking back over her shoulder, he was just reaching the bottom of the hill. She watched him cross the beam of a streetlight, and disappear through the trees into the road below. 

Rey had walked for longer, in worse weather. Too proud or broke to spend the money on a cab, she was used to stuffing her hair into a hood, hunching her shoulders, and swaggering in a don’t-fuck-with-me gait until her scuffed and mended boots took her safely home. 

Before she had a little money to spare for extravagances like gloves, there had been the night when it had dipped to minus four, and she had had to thaw her bluish-white fingers in a bowl of room-temperature water until the pain brought them back to life. Meeting Ben had been like the painful flush of blood back into her frozen extremities. 

A rat skittered off her doorstep as she wiped her feet on the mat and wiggled her key into the temperamental lock. Rey creaked up the three flights of stairs, and paused on the narrow landing to look at the half moon gleaming in the grimy window. 

Better not to turn over this night too carefully in her mind, she thought. Better not to have those kinds of thoughts for someone who lives in Oregon, and is moderately famous, and probably won’t ever be in town enough for those feelings to amount to anything.

She shook herself mentally, and let herself in to the silent apartment.

Rey shucked her boots and her practical layers to the sound of Kaydel’s wheezing snore from the other room. She leaned back slowly onto the bed, thinking it might be a while before she could fall asleep tonight.

But the dark swooped in and took her, and filled the blackness behind her eyes with a thousand twinkling lights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General Grievous is based on [Sabaton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1snEYPg8TXs).
> 
> The secret paths of Brookline are real, and worth exploring if you're even in Boston.
> 
> Holler at this fanthem in the comments.


	5. Hold for Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long hiatus! When we left off, Rey and Ben were being too dumb and stubborn to talk about their feelings. Now, we pick back up with Rey and Ben being too stubborn and dumb to talk about their feelings.

**October 23rd. Somewhere outside of Winnipeg.**

“Guess who made the alt lady boners subreddit!” Phasma crowed from the back of the tour bus.

“Congrats, babe” said Hux drily.

“Not me, dumbass. This guy.” She poked Ben in the shoulder with one finger. He grunted, nose buried in a document on his laptop.

“What’s an alt lady boner?” he muttered. 

In answer, Phasma shoved her phone between his nose and the keyboard. He spluttered at the view of a black and white photo of himself, shirtless and gripping his belt buckle, with his tongue out between two fingers.

“Jesus Christ,” Ben growled, and shoved the heels of his hands into his eyes as if to scrub away the image. Phasma cackled. Someone from the rear seats wolf-whistled, and a few of the backing band musicians snickered.

“It’s that thirsty Reddit page where people post famous shirtless tattooed guys,” she said brightly. 

“But I don’t even look like that anymore!” Ben grabbed her hand and hauled the phone back under his face. He dimly recognized the picture from a _Kerrang!_ photo shoot. God. That must have been, what, 2011? His ribs stuck out under painfully skinny shoulders, and an adolescent swoop of hair crested his forehead. He winced at the “eat shit” hand tattoo he’d since gotten covered up.

Hux leaned lazily over the seat back and craned his neck to look. “Damn, you do look rough. What are you, twelve?” Phasma collapsed back into her seat, dissolving into helpless giggles.

Ben sighed. “They took that when I started Tie Fighting.”

“Ooh, bad boy phase.” Hux grinned. Ben glowered at him.

“I front a band that sings about sex and murder. My entire life is a bad boy phase.”

“But this, this is a new achievement.” Phasma’s face lit up. “Want me to read the comments?”

“NO!” 

“ _Hell_ , yes.”

Ben shoved his noise-cancelling headphones over his ears and cranked the volume.

He leaned back in the seat and exhaled.

He’d been thinking about her for 18 days.

In the beginning, he played mind games with himself. Three days, and he would force himself to think of something else. A week, and he would text her. Two weeks, and he would definitely, absolutely text her. Now it was approaching three weeks, and the catastrophizing part of his brain assumed Rey had either forgotten he ever existed or built a pallet fire in some Allston parking lot and burned him in effigy. 

Ben closed his eyes and started to breathe with intention. Five seconds in, to the thrumming of the bus tires under his feet. Five seconds out, to the stale hiss of the air conditioning overhead. Slowly, he started to relax every part of his body, beginning with his toes. 

Remembering his teenage tai-chi breathing lessons had been one of the many small, unexpected highlights of getting sober. Now that Uncle Luke wasn’t around to narrate pretentious things like “now your pelvis, where your muladhara, your root chakra, resides” this exercise was a lot more useful and a lot less infuriating. 

_Fuck that guy_ , he thought briefly, and had to start again at his ankles. 

Countless minutes later, when Ben finally reached the crown of his head, the fidgeting behind him had finally settled down.

He lifted one ear of his headphones to make sure Phasma and Hux were quiet.

He cracked his knuckles and shook out his hands before gingerly picking up his phone.

_Hi._

God, too soon, not ready, think think think.

_I wanted to give you some space._

Breathe.

_I’m sorry for upsetting you the last time we saw each other._

_I understand if you don’t want to talk about it._

Sent.

There. Was that so hard? 

_Yes_ , he answered himself sarcastically. 

A single fingernail tapped him on the back of the head.

Ben swiveled around and popped off his headphones. Phasma leaned forward with her hand on his headrest, looking crestfallen.

“Hey. I took it a little far there, and I’m sorry.”

Ben sighed. “That’s okay. It’s a stupid picture, but it’s been on the internet for a long time already.”

She ruffled his hair. “You look better now, anyway. You should call _Kerrang!_ and see if they want to do a followup.”

Ben groaned, and she smiled. She looked over at Hux, whom Ben noticed had fallen asleep, open-mouthed and drooling gently into his pink airplane neck pillow.

“You seem like something’s on your mind, Ben.”

Ben opened his mouth, expecting an intelligent lie to assert itself. Nothing came out, so he shut it again. 

Phasma frowned. “You’re still thinking about Rey. Aren’t you.”

“What?” Ben spluttered. “No, it’s just the tour, kicking it off yesterday has got me--”

“Ben.” His friend put up a hand. “Buddy. Don’t try that with me.”

He slumped. Phasma shifted closer to him in her bus seat, whispering to make sure Hux stayed asleep.

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But if you do want to, I’m here.”

Ben nodded. “You _are_ always there for girl trouble.”

“She seems like she was worth the trouble.” Phasma cocked her head. “And, yeah, fine as hell. But also smart. And it has been literally years since I’ve seen you connect with a stranger like that.”

Ben chewed his lip. “I think it has been,” he said, not a little sadly.

Phasma laid a hand on his shoulder. “When’s the last time you texted her?”

“Just now.”

“Well. Let me know how it goes?”

“I will. I promise.” She gave his shoulder a final pat and settled back into her seat. 

An hour later, the sharp ping of a text notification broke the silence. Phasma popped out of her seat like a prairie dog, and Ben dangled his phone over the back of the head rest to let her read the screen.

_Thanks for that. But, I think I’ve had enough space. Wanna talk later tonight?_

Hux snapped awake and bashed his head against the window as Phasma’s whoop of joy ricocheted around the bus.

\---

**Allston.**

_Shit_ , Rey thought.

_Fucking hell_ , she added, twisting the wrench around.

_Son of bitch_ , she finished, before giving the tool such a hard twist it bounced off the steel speaker rack and smashed her thumb.

“Goddammit,” she snapped.

Han’s head appeared around around the edge of the ticket booth.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Rey grumbled.

“It’s not nothing if you’ve been stomping around swearing all morning.”

She massaged her temples. “I’m fine.”

A minute later, a hand jutted into her vision holding a steaming styrofoam cup of instant coffee.

Han was frowning at her with what Rey mentally categorized as his sympathetic glower. 

She put her wrench down and sat crosslegged on the edge of the stage.

“Thanks.”

Han nodded, and leaned against the stage apron to swig his own cup of coffee.

“What’s going on, Rey?”

She licked coffee from her upper lip. “Nothing. I just feel off today.”

Han looked nonplussed.

“That why you’ve been checking your phone every two minutes?”

Rey winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to jeopardize my work with distractions. I’ll turn off notifications and--”

“Whoa, whoa. No, no, no,” Han cut in. “I’m not slapping your wrist. I’m asking what’s eating you.”

Rey looked up. Under his gruff exterior, it was easy to forget what a soft heart Han had sometimes. His eyebrows were drawn together in a fatherly concern that made her heart hurt a little.

“I think I met someone. But I can’t decide if he’s an ass or not.”

Han pursed his lips. 

“He’s nice, mostly,” she went on, “but he lives on the West Coast, and he hasn’t called, or texted, or told me how he feels about me, and I just…I don’t have time to deal with this right now!”

Han sighed. “Rey, how old are you?”

“Twenty-seven,” she said petulantly.

He spread his hands wide. “Then when _are_ you going to have time to deal with it?” 

She blinked.

“You’re young, you have a job, you’re moping around and working overtime because your friends are out of town…and you can’t pony up and give this guy a call?”

She glared at him.

“If this is when you start bitching about millennials, then I’m--”

“Hey, Chuy!” Han yelled across the room.

“Don’t, what—why are you getting him involved?!” Rey hissed.

Chuy shuffled out of the box office. 

“Chuy, do you remember when you fell in love with that girl we met at the gas station and you made me drive all the way from Texas to Detroit so you could play the guitar under her window?”

Chuy nodded, a wistful look in his eyes.

“Tell ‘er what happened.”

Chuy smiled. “She threw a sandal at me and told me to go home.”

Han jabbed a finger at him. “Do you regret that?”

“Nope. Good road trip.”

“See?” He turned to Rey. “You remember the crazy things. Go do some while you can, kid.”

“I’m not driving to Oregon.”

A strange look crossed Han’s face. 

“Oregon?”

“That’s where he lives. But he’s on tour with his band right now, so he’s actually somewhere between Toronto and...Mexico City, I think.”

Han sat frozen, his cup of coffee steaming in front of his face.

“How did you say you two met?”

“Coffee shop. The Outer Rim, actually.” Rey jerked a thumb in the general direction of the door.

Han relaxed slightly. “So he was in Boston recently.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, Han. I’m not getting in over my head.”

He shook his head as if to clear it. “That’s what I’m worried about, kid. You _never_ getting in over your head.”

He slapped her on the back and drained his coffee. “It’s fun. You should try it sometime.”

From across the hall, Chuy chuckled.

A few minutes after she returned to her wrench and the speaker rack, Rey’s phone chirped in her pocket. 

_Tonight sounds good. What time works for you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, throw your vitriol at me in the comments.


	6. Crosstalk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that mutual pining tag?

**Around 7 a.m. One week later.**

Rey had never had a day-long thumb cramp before. 

She had already deleted seven other text logs, a puzzle game, and her bus tracking app to make room on her ailing phone for Ben’s barrage of novel-length texts. Their first phone call was short, awkward, but oddly sweet; somehow, it had subsided into near-constant communication.

She let out a jaw-cracking yawn. They had finally stopped texting after midnight. At six o’ clock she’d woken to a new pile of song recommendations, questions about her favorite Marvel comics, rants about diner food in flyover states, and observations about the birds outside the tour bus window, all time-stamped after 2 a.m. When she had feverishly typed out a stack of replies on the train (including _blueberry pancakes are SUPPOSED to be fluffy, you giant idiot_ ) she had been surprised to get an answering chime at nearly seven.

She was still texting him when she unlocked Endor’s doors one-handed and pushed her way into the silent hall.

_Video projections are one thing I wish we had the tech for. I've been trying to find a way to squeeze it into the budget since last year._

_Speaking of projections. What do you think of these?_

Rey dragged her phone screen to enlarge the tiny image. Swirls of calligraphic script twined and unraveled to form giant wings. She clicked back and forth between the three files in her text thread, and saw how the written wings would unwind into a ribbon like a drawing of the wind. Shades of red and silver became a pale gold like sunlight. She could already pick out the amber gels in her mind.

_These are really good. Did you commission them?_

An ellipsis blipped on her phone for a minute as Ben composed his thoughts.

_No. They’re something I’ve been working on for a while._

_You do calligraphy?!_

_Now & then. I’ve been practicing since I was a kid.  
It’s a hobby._

_It’s beautiful._

Rey smiled at the artwork, imagining this tattooed hulk of a man bending quietly over a notebook with a chisel-tipped pen. She wondered if they made fun of him on the tour bus. She started to type faster.

_Do you get much of an outlet for it?_

_I make our album art._

Rey raised her eyebrows. She quickly googled the Nights of Ren’s two album covers and a few single releases. 

She’d had no idea he was such a Renaissance man. On their debut album, a kaiju fought a giant skeleton crawling out of the ocean, scales and bones made up of tiny words and letters dripping with spikes and dark flourishes. Red script framed the tableau like the entrance to a mosque. On the second album, an exploding star scattered tendrils of crimson words into a galaxy of tiny handwritten stars. Even the intricate crossing pattern of the band’s logo, Rey now noticed, was in a similar style to the drawings in her phone. Not a scribble or a collection of Norse runes, but an intricate pattern formed by the letters in its name.

_Logo too? For what I’d call a melodic metalcore band, you really do have a black metal logo._

_At least it’s legible._

_Joking, joking. In all seriousness, you’re extremely talented. In more ways than one. Your style is gorgeous._

She bit her lip, wondering if she wasn’t laying it on a little thick.

_Thanks._

She sighed.

_It’s funny you say that. I’ve honestly been feeling kinda burnt out before we even started this tour.  
I’m wondering if I need to hide away for a while. Try something new._

Rey thought about what to say to that. 

_You can hide with me_ sounded ever so slightly desperate.

 _Why do you think you feel that way?_ was too...clinical.

She was about to settle for _like what?_ when a new text pinged onto the screen.

_Do you like Fountains of Wayne?_

Rey furrowed her brow. That was a plot twist.

_Sky Full of Holes is my favorite album. Closely followed by Welcome Interstate Managers._

The three dots blipped for roughly an eternity.

Finally, a video message blinked into her inbox.

Rey swiveled her head around the darkened theater. Still at least an hour until anyone else showed up. 

She tucked her legs up into her chest and settled onstage into a more comfortable position, then clicked play.

The video showed the middle of Ben’s torso, clad in his usual black t-shirt and holding, absurdly, a ukulele. His hands looked impossibly large, but astonishingly gentle, as he grasped the fretboard and began to strum.

_We’re still in  
Wisconsin  
As far as I know,  
Today was Green Bay, and  
Tomorrow’s Chicago…_

Rey smiled. It must be five-thirty in the morning, somewhere between St. Paul and Denver. He was singing softly, so as not to wake up the rest of the tour bus.

_I just wanted to say, hey,  
I've been writing you a road song  
It's a cliché, but hey,  
That doesn't make it so wrong…_

She tried to imagine what his face was doing. His soft mouth forming those words, the way his eyebrows lifted when he went for the higher notes at the beginning of the chorus. A dark scruff on his chin from waiting until the next stop in a hotel to shave.

Rey leaned her head against her knees. She inhaled as Ben reached the end of the second verse, already prepared for the sweet sadness of the ending, when she was surprised to hear him keep going.

_I got lost in  
Well, Boston  
For the first time in a while  
You tossed me  
Your coffee  
But you left me with a smile_

_It’s nearing dawn here,  
Soon the morning will break  
I know it’s early, but  
I knew you would be awake._

_I just wanted to say, hey  
I’m not often one for road songs  
To start my day, this way  
It feels like it’s been so long  
That’s why I wrote instead of sleeping  
And if my notes are not worth keeping  
I still had more fun  
Than I would on my own...  
So I’m singing you a road song  
To say you’re not alone…_

He strummed a final chord resolution, then a hand picked up the phone. The video wobbled over a pair of knees, then stopped on a bus window showing blurring fields of corn, with the sun just rising over the waving hills.

It clicked off.

Rey sat in stunned silence for a moment. 

She glanced at her watch. 

She scrambled to her feet, and sprinted across the hall and up the steps to the tech booth. 

Rey turned on the house mics in a flurry of flipped switches, and bounced on the balls of her feet as the board slowly switched on. She plugged her phone into Arturo’s aux cable and pressed play again.

Ben’s gentle ukulele reverberated over Endor’s speaker system. His soft voice swelled and soared, filling every crevice of the rafters with its warmth and clarity. Rey listened to the entire three verses again, fighting back tears that tasted different from the ones she’d cried next to Finn in Corellia.

_I still had more fun  
Than I would on my own...  
So I’m singing you a road song  
To say you’re not alone…_

“Neither are you,” she whispered, and a single tear slipped down her face as she unplugged her phone and switched off the board to start her day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In memory of Adam Schlesinger.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltwoI5gstfY


	7. Ambient Field

**November 11th. 4:37 p.m.**

Talking was as natural as breathing. Rey floated from her apartment to work to the grocery store, texting; they snatched phone calls between load-ins and breakfasts and long nighttime walks. Ben’s patched-up phone could no longer handle Skype, but they took turns firing off goofy and heartfelt video messages. Just that morning she had walked all the way to the esplanade to show him the scattering of autumn snow that had fallen overnight.

Rey was simultaneously composing a note to Ben in her head, reviewing the night’s notes on her phone, and stuffing the last of an Outer Rim chocolate chip muffin into her mouth as she entered Endor for her evening shift and strode absently past the box office.

“Rey?” Leia’s voice came from the back office.

“Yeaff?” she answered thickly and ungraciously through a wad of muffin. 

“Can you come in here for a moment? There’s some people I’d like you to meet.”

 _Crissakes._ Rey hastily wiped the crumbs from her mouth and wiped her hands on her sweatshirt. 

When she walked into the office, her eyebrows shot up.

“Hi.”

A suave man in a saffron yellow turtleneck sweater lounged across a plastic chair in front of the shabby desk. Only math said his hair should be grey; his trim moustache and warm eyes were still as dark as they were in the photo in the hallway. 

Beside him, a man who could have been his younger doppelganger gave Rey a crisp upward nod and smoothed the front of his cherry-red oxford shirt. 

“Rey, this is Lando Calrissian and his son Bambino,” said Leia from behind the desk. 

The younger man gave a warm, molten chuckle that split his neat beard into two rows of perfect white teeth. 

“Lan Junior is also fine, Auntie Leia.”

“Aw, kid, you know you’ll always be Bambino around here. Hiya, Rey.” Han didn’t look up from tuning the round white hollow-bodied electric guitar that balanced on his lap like a gleaming Kennedy-era cartoon spaceship. 

“Hi. It’s an honor,” Rey managed, surreptitiously checking her teeth with her tongue for chocolate.

Lando Calrissian waved one ring-studded hand magnanimously.

“Nonsense, but that’s very nice of you.”

“Is that the Falcon?!” Rey finally asked the question she’d been dying to since she walked in.

Han played a corny, theatrical flourish on the guitar. The notes chimed out of the mini amp at his feet like a ripple of summer sunshine. 

“Yep, this is her. The Millenium Falcon.” 

Rey goggled. Lan Junior leaned forward in his chair and grinned at her conspiratorially. 

“I know, right?!”

“It’s not that impressive,” groused Han. “I wouldn’t even have her out if this old bastard hadn’t gotten sentimental on me and asked for it.”

“Hey, I miss the old girl,” said Lando fondly. “You don’t forget the axe that got you your first Billboard Hot 100.”

“You just play poker for her and lose her,” Lan Junior cut in. Lando glared, and Leia laughed heartily.

“All things considered, Lando, she might have been better off with you. At least you’re still performing. She just sits over our mantelpiece most days.”

“Hey, only if you call being one or two years short of rotting away in Vegas _performing,_ ” Han objected. 

“I still get out there,” Lando protested. “Did that spot with Mavis Staples last year. And I didn’t see _you_ playing at the Obama inauguration.”

Han rolled his eyes as Lan Junior made a noise like someone watching a knockout in a boxing ring. “He didn’t ask any nice Italian boys from Texas. And I have to admit, you played a good show.” 

Rey felt her head spinning. “What brings you two to Boston?”

“I live here, part of the time,” said Lan. “when I’m not touring or working in L.A.”

“Rey, I don’t know if you watch the Grammys, but Lan was there last year--” Leia started while Lando’s son made shushing noises and squeezed her hand affectionately.

“Oh I know,” said Rey hastily. “Best New Artist 2015, best Rap Album 2016...your duet with Cee Lo Green was one of my favorites.” 

“Like my dad always says, can’t trade on that forever,” he said modestly. “But thank you. Auntie Leia already brags about me too much. What do you like about being a stage manager, Rey?”

“Hang on, before we get into that--” Han held up a hand. “Rey, it’s time we told you. The reason Lando and this kid are here is that they came to talk about a loan for Endor.” 

Rey opened her mouth to congratulate him, but Han headed her off again with an upraised finger. 

“Leia and I did some thinking, and we’re going to accept it. But, we can’t string you along forever.” Lando looked at him sadly. Lan Junior stared at the floor, his hands folded. Han sighed.

“We decided that if we can’t make enough to start paying that loan back by the end of next year,” said Leia softly, “we’re going to have to close.”

Rey stared silently at the threadbare carpet. After an eternity, she felt Leia get up from behind the desk and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Take some time, Rey,” said Leia gently. “We’re not there yet. Go work, go distract yourself, and think about it later.”

“Okay,” Rey mumbled. “But--are we--are we brainstorming? Because if you need ideas, I can come back and--”

“We’re thinking of some things,” interrupted Han. “Calling in some favors.” He eyed Leia. “Including, maybe, some family favors.”

Leia glared at him. “Rey, if you have ideas, you know Han and I will always listen to you. We appreciate everything you’re doing.” 

Rey nodded numbly. She noticed for the first time how the bags under Leia’s eyes had deepened. Han glowered at the Falcon in his lap, not making eye contact with anyone. She glanced around at Lando and Lan Junior’s sympathetic faces and realized she should tactfully make an exit.

“Thank you, Leia. Really. I’m so grateful. I will, um, go work on...tonight’s...setup. Lovely to meet you.” She waved briefly at Han and Leia’s guests, who both nodded graciously, and beat a retreat out of the office.

“Rey, could you please close the door on your way out?” Leia called.

“Sorry!” She pulled it shut with a loud clunk and winced.

Rey walked swiftly down the hallway, but stopped at the corner when she heard Lan Junior start to speak again. Fighting herself and losing, she tiptoed back to listen. 

“As long as asking Luke is a possibility...have you thought about asking your son?”

A poisonous silence dropped into the office.

“No,” said Leia.

“Lan, why?” said Lando.

“I’m just asking,” he reasoned. “I could talk to him for you, if it makes a difference.”

“Kid,” said Han heavily, “it’s been a few years since we’ve talked to Ben. More than a few.” 

A queasy feeling brewed in Rey’s stomach. 

Lan Junior sighed.

“I know. I didn’t mean to push it. I’m sorry.” 

Suddenly ashamed of her eavesdropping, Rey hurried silently out of the hallway and into the main hall. 

Arturo sat in a chair in front of an overflowing cardboard box, sorting the pile of AA and AAA batteries that had been tangled around the crew headsets. 

“Arturo!” 

He looked up.

“What’s up, Rey? You got cake or something on your hoodie. Right there. Yeah. What’s going on?”

 _Ask him._ Ben was a common enough name. It couldn’t be important that Leia and Han’s son was a musician named Ben, and her...whatever he was was a musician named Ben.

It couldn’t. 

“Did you know Lando Calrissian and Lan Calrissian Junior are in the office?”

“Oh yeah! Cool, right? Have you met ‘em?” Arturo gave a quick grin that faded like a camera flash. “Guess you heard why they came.”

“Yeah.” 

He sighed. “Don’t worry too much. We won’t go down without a fight.” He stood with a grunt and swept the last of the batteries into a glass pickle jar at his feet. “Everything set backstage?”

“I’ll go double check.” Rey walked off toward the green room. As she pushed through the door, her phone pinged. 

Uncertain why, she decided to ignore it.


	8. White Noise

**November 13th. 12:40 a.m. Most likely Nevada.**

Ben stared at Rey’s smiling image in the tiny square of his phone screen, debating.

There were reasons he never dipped into social media. Toxic fans, toxic news, links to his wikipedia page, and a mostly-estranged family, to name the most compelling. Danny handled the Nights’ official accounts. And he had eventually stopped pumping Ben to make an official Kylo Ren profile after Ben flipped open his laptop and wordlessly scrolled through the entire page of “kylo ren controversy” Google search results. 

But a hidden personal account wasn’t against the rules. Especially if the person you were infatuated with and obsessively texting had finally gone to bed and you wanted to stalk her on the internet. 

He furrowed his brow. After racking his brain for the profile name he’d used the last time he opened an online account, he was rewarded with the news that his Edgar Allan Poe fanboy middle-school MySpace selection wasn’t yet taken on Instagram. Xx_onlythisandnothingmore_xx was open for business.

Ben took a silent deep breath and clicked “Follow.” Thank god Rey’s profile was public. 

209 followers. Her bio: “Constantly in search of New England’s loudest music and best chocolate-chip cookies. She/her/hers. Black Lives Matter.” Ben resisted the urge to close Instagram and search for cookie delivery services in Boston. 

Rey’s posting history was sparse. A few blurry images of lighting setups and concerts. The scoreboard at one of last season’s Red Sox games. A handful of photos of her friend (brother, he corrected himself) Finn gurning at the camera over a board game, a freshly-made snowman, a table laid out for beer pong. 

He smiled at an image of Rey holding a tortoiseshell kitten on her lap, her face wreathed in Christmas-morning joy. “OMG we have a CAT CAFE now!!!!” the caption proclaimed. 

Ben scrolled into summer 2016 and idly swiped through a collection of snapshots tagged from Crane Beach. His heart skipped a beat. 

_So that really happens in real life,_ he thought when he caught his breath.

Rey stood on the sand in a mint-green bikini, looking over one shoulder as if someone had called out to her from behind. The wind ruffled her brown hair around her face, tangling in her earrings and exposing the fuzz of the undercut below her left ear. She smiled shyly, squinting into the sun. Her long, long legs were speckled with sand. A strand of seaweed clung to one ankle. 

Ben sighed hopelessly.

When he had two seconds to himself, he might have slipped into the fantasy that this thing with Rey would work out. That she would come on tour, or that somehow he could spend time in her city without his parents finding out that he had effectively moved back home and was gunning for a girlfriend. That they could do normal things together, like go to the movies, and make pancakes. And maybe kiss.  
Even if she decided she didn’t want that, and he somehow didn’t instantaneously combust of shame, Ben had to admit that finding a friend like Rey was a sadly momentous occurrence for him. He really, passionately wanted to keep her.

He needed to learn how to be worth keeping around. 

He rubbed a hand across his face and looked at his surroundings, blinking in the dark after staring at the light from his phone. The tour bus hummed in the wide, empty parking lot of a rest stop. Most of the band had flocked to the entrance to stock up on snacks or to smoke. It had to be shortly after midnight by now. 

He yawned and scrolled to the next photos.

There was the coffee shop he had met her in, in the background of a gigantic chocolate muffin blocking out the sun setting over the street.

There was the green caterpillar of the Boston subway chugging up the same street, captioned with #alwayslate and a string of (loving?) expletives.

There was snow on the sidewalk in front of a nondescript metal door. Rey grinned at the camera from the depths of a puffy black scarf, one thumb up and the other hand holding a ring of keys. The caption read:  
“Starting today, this kid is a STAGE. MANAGER. Come hit us up for a show at dirty Allston’s Endor Rock Club!!!”

Ben had the sensation that he was falling. 

From far away, the door to the rest stop banged shut and laughter and voices rang out into the night.

He hurled his phone across the half-empty parking lot, and its cracked screen shattered into a thousand shimmering pieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Don't hold your breath for me...I'll give you bad advice, because I'm bad at life.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06pOk_UVtvA)


	9. Going Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somebody draw a map of this tour because it's getting out of hand.

**December 10th. Around 5 p.m. Endor Music Hall.**

Whoever ran the Nights of Ren’s social media accounts was good at their job, Rey decided. They certainly gave her ample material for stalking Ben when he refused to pick up his damn phone. 

Two weeks of missed calls and unanswered texts surely couldn’t count as ghosting her. Not yet. Maybe his old, cracked phone had finally bit the dust. Maybe the tour was just grueling. But when _This is hurtful and I’d like you to tell me if you don’t want to talk anymore_ had devolved into the occasional _Hey,_ she decided it was verging on pathetic. 

Better to stop wasting energy and let him come crawling back when he felt like it. 

If he felt like it.

So when the Nights’ Twitter had announced that their festival appearance in San Antonio would be livestreamed on Youtube, Rey had initially scoffed. 

On the afternoon of the concert, she reported to work at Endor, and ignored her phone when the start time came and went. 

An hour in, her resolve wavered, but she stuffed her phone back in her pocket and continued reorganizing the electrical cabinet.

Twenty minutes later, she found herself in an alleyway behind Endor, an iced coffee in hand, her thumb poised over the screen.

She hated herself a little bit.

She clicked the link anyway. 

The livestream flicked on just as the Nights of Ren crashed to the finish of one number and the crowd roared and clapped. Kylo raised his hands to the audience and they cheered again. 

His muscular legs were poured into liquid-tight black leather pants, and he wore a black Western shirt with pearl buttons and embroidered red roses, unbuttoned to the waist. 

_Laying it on a little thick, aren’t we cowboy?_ Rey rolled her eyes. _What kind of dumbass wears leather pants onstage in May in Texas?_

“Good evening, San Antonio,” Kylo growled into the mic. The answering shriek was a little more feminine this time.

“We are the Nights of Ren,” he gestured at the band, “and we’re fucking stoked to be back in Texas.” Another roar. _Back?_ Rey thought. 

The backing band started a swing beat, led by Phasma’s snare, and Kylo kept time with a cocked hip and the heel of one shoe for a few bars before he brought the mic up to his lips.

_You’ve got time, darlin’,  
I’ve got hands  
You say you have a razor blade in your shoe?  
Well, I’ve got gasoline in my can…_

Rey made a disgusted noise at the screen as the audience’s tinny scream buzzed in her speakers. But she kept listening.

_Lazin’ on Sunday, sleepin’ on Monday  
Skivin’ on Tuesday, drivin’ on Friday  
Wednesday, Thursday blurrin’ on your floor  
Don’t remember Saturday, but who could ask for more?_

Rey heard the distant hum of feedback from the speaker system. She hurriedly switched off her phone, stuffing it into her back pocket as she strode through Endor’s back door.

\------

“I’m surprised you still want to perform that one.” 

“What?” Ben lifted his face from the towel he was using to mop the sweat from his hair. Phasma was fixing him with a serious face.

“‘Wednesday, Thursday, blurring on your floor?’” she leaned in and lowered her voice. “You told me you wrote that about your drug blackouts. You’ve been having a rough time lately. Why don’t we just take it out of the set list for now?”

“Nah, it’s fine.” Ben shrugged. “The swing tempo is good for breaking up the set. The audience likes it.” Phasma lifted an eyebrow. “Really, I’m fine!” He spread his hands wide, making the towel flap. “Bri, you know I would tell you if I started having...problems, again.”

“Okay. I’m just concerned. I wish you would talk to her.” 

Ben briefly debated replying “who?” but decided it wasn’t worth it. He simply nodded.

“I will. I just need to figure out what I’m going to say. I--I think I fucked it up again.”

Phasma sighed, and reached up a hand to remove a smear of eyeliner from his cheek with one businesslike swipe. 

“Ow. Thanks, mom.”

“Don’t gimme that shit.” She smiled and shoved him hard in the solar plexus. He chuckled as he stumbled backwards.

“Lock and load, guys,” called Hux. “Next set’s ready to start.”

“Got it, thanks,” Phasma answered. She turned back to Ben. 

“I’m sure it’s going to be okay. But you need to be the one to start it.” He nodded, chewing one lip. Hux beckoned to them and began walking out.

Ben squared his shoulders, and stepped back out onstage.

\---

Rey plugged the minifridge back in and stood up from the floor with a grunt. The bar’s new electrical socket gleamed in the center of the blackened linoleum. She gathered up her tools and stray wire caps and swung open the partition back onto the mezzanine. 

She paused. Arturo and Akbar were out on a dinner break. The hall was momentarily quiet.

The partition closed behind her with a soft clunk.

A minute couldn’t hurt. _Just one number,_ she thought, and opened the tab on her phone again. 

\---

Ben raised his head from his guitar tuning at an indistinct shout from the back of the crown.

“Camisa Negra!”

“Camisa Negra!”

When she repeated it for the third time, he squinted through the lights and spotted a small woman with dark hair perched on the shoulders of a taller concert goer, her hands cupped around her mouth. _Godammit._ He hadn’t put this song in the set list tonight for...compelling personal reasons. But Kylo Ren always gives the people what they want. Ben plastered a wry smile onto his face.

“Por fin, alguien me pide!” He sighed theatrically, tipping his head back so his hair cascaded around the column of his throat. “And here I was thinking we weren’t doing any covers tonight.”  
The diehard Nights fans who knew what was coming murmured in anticipation. He looked at Hux, who nodded and turned to verify a chord progression with the backing band. Kylo switched the tuning on his red Gibson again. 

“Here’s a special request I get sometimes…” He started a creeping minor vamp on the guitar. “Cortesía de nuestro amigo Colombiano Juanes…” The woman who had yelled out the request whooped. “Maybe it’s ‘cause I always wear black….” the crowd chuckled, and a few people started to clap on the beat.

Kylo finished the vamp in a flourishing arpeggio. He closed his eyes and started to sing.

_Tengo la camisa negra  
Hoy mi amor está de luto  
Tengo en la alma una pena,  
Y es por culpa de tu embrujo…_

\---

Rey blinked. _He speaks Spanish? Huh._

He was attacking this one with his usual verve, throwing in almost flamenco-like vocal flourishes on the long vowels and duetting with Hux on the guitar fills. She found herself nodding in time as he launched into a new verse, a bitter but somehow plaintive look on his face.

_Tengo una camisa negra  
Ya mi amor no te interesa…_

“He changed the words a little bit there.”

Rey jumped so hard her phone leapt out of her hand and clattered onto the bar top.

Chuy leaned impassively on the other side, his hands folded in front of him.

“How long have you been there?”

He shrugged one massive shoulder. “A while. You don’t mind if I listen with you?”

Rey calmed her breathing. “No. Please. Do you--do you know the Nights of Ren?”

“Uf, do I.” Chuy chewed on his hairy lower lip. 

“Okay,” said Rey slowly. “Well, they’re doing a livestream. From San Antonio. It’s pretty good so far.” She propped her phone against one of the taps and she and Chuy listened in silence for a minute.  
The bouncer had an odd, faraway look in his eyes. At this distance, Rey could pick out more of the grey streaking his beard and temples. After the band finished the song and started on a thrashing track from their first album, he sighed heavily.

“Rey?”

“Yes?” she asked, feeling oddly like she’d been caught breaking a rule.

“Is this that guy you weren’t sure if you liked?” Chuy gazed at her levelly.

“...Yes?” Chuy continued to stare at her. “Well, we sort of figured out we had feelings for each other, but then he stopped talking to me. And wouldn’t tell me why, so I think he might have changed his mind, and if he’s going to pull that kind of shit, then I--”

“Rey,” Chuy interrupted. “There’s more going on here then you think.” He looked wary, but his dark brown eyes were kind. 

Rey frowned in confusion. “What?”

Chuy pointed a large finger at Ben’s tiny image, bobbing and swaying on the screen. “That’s Ben.”

“Yes. I know his name is Ben.” She raised an eyebrow.

“No, Rey. That’s Ben _Solo._ ”

Rey’s throat went dry. 

The sounds of the Nights of Ren’s music droned on between them.

She opened her mouth to form words, but no sound would come out. She felt suddenly cold and nauseous. 

“Rey, honey, it’s okay. I guess he didn’t tell you.” Chuy ran a hand over his face. “I don’t talk to Han about it, but I’ve been following his career. I look it up and see what he’s doing. And if you met him and you liked him, then maybe it means not everything Han and Leia says about him is true.”

“You know him?” Rey asked in a small voice.

Chuy smiled sadly. “I was like his second dad. I’m the one who taught him Spanish.” He watched the concert in silence for a moment.

“In the summers, we used to close up this place and go back down to Texas for a few weeks to visit his grandparents--Leia’s adopted mom and dad--with Han, and me, and Arturo, and everybody. That was back when Lucas was still talking to everybody.”

“Chuy. What happened?” Rey whispered.

He sighed. “Uy, I don’t know. I don’t know if I can tell you without telling a really long story.”

Rey shut her phone off and turned it face down on the bar.

“When he was in high school, here in Brookline, he wanted to go play music in the worst way. He was so good at it. Leia was still touring, Han was still writing a little, so it was all in their life, all the time, you know?” Chuy shook his head.

“It was so, so hard, watching that kid grow up with his parents so busy. It was like nobody had time for him. Besides having a concert here every night, and watching his friend, Lando’s son, make his mixtapes and come up as a rapper. And the summer vacation when Ben was fifteen, Leia thought if he went and lived with Uncle Luke for a few weeks and watched him gig all day it would keep him busy and he would get tired of music, but it just made him more excited. That’s when Luke took him to his first big show and showed him off to all his industry people. And that guy Smoke got his claws into him. He let Ben audition as a guitarist. He got headhunted.

“And then he called his parents and told them he wanted to drop out and go join a band. Pero Leia wouldn’t let him leave school. Han wanted to let him go for it, but Luke took her side. And when Smoke and First Order came to get Ben to sign a contract, Luke said since he was underage that he was his legal guardian, and he tore it up.” Chuy threw up his hands.

“And then, Ben just couldn’t forgive him for it. He got himself declared a...ugh, whaddoyou call it? An emancipated minor, in Texas. He ran away from home, basically. They pushed him out. Without knowing that was what they were doing. 

“And he called Brookline High School and dropped out from a pay phone in Marfa, and…” Chuy clasped his hands on the bar again. “And that was the last time he’s ever been home. Thirteen years.” He shook his head. “I don’t ever forget how long it’s been.”

Rey waited. Chuy drew breath to continue.

“And in between he’s been in those three bands, and he was so, just, out of it for a few years. He got arrested a couple of times, and he had the drug problems…”

“Drug problems?” broke in Rey.

“Yeah. He didn’t tell you that either? Coño, I shouldn’t have said nothing, then.”

“He seemed sober when I saw him,” said Rey. “But--but he did have two beers…”

“Wait. You saw him in Boston? The beer, we’ll get to that in a moment.” Chuy leaned forward. “But when did you see him?”

“Last October--how could he be here and not tell Han and Leia?! I’m going to kill him when I see him again…”

Chuy let out a surprisingly high-pitched giggle at her sudden fire. 

“Don’t worry, I know he comes back without telling us. I get updates from Lan Junior. It makes me sad, but I guess he’s not ready yet. He told me when Ben formed Nights of Ren, he told me when he checked into rehab a couple of years ago. Somehow he did it on the first try. He was always a disciplined kid. So. What’d you guys do?”

“We went to a concert at Crait. Walked around.” Rey shrugged, still numb with shock.

Chuy nodded slowly. “They got good shows there. Also the only concert hall around here that’s got O’Douls.”

Realization dawned on Rey’s face. Chuy nodded.

“Han and I used to go there more often back when he got clean and we went out more. The fake beer thing didn’t work for him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Ben could do it. Like I said, determined. But. Did you meet any of his friends?”

Rey was still reeling from all of the information she was trying to absorb. She’d been staring at a swirl in the grain of the bar top, but when she looked up, Chuy had a sad, hungry look in his eyes. 

Hungry for information about the man he hadn’t gotten to watch grow up. 

She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and gathered her thoughts.

“He’s friends with the people in his band. Phasma and Hux. They seem nice. Stable. They--seem like they take good care of each other.”

Chuy nodded. He opened his mouth to say something more when a shout interrupted him.

“Chucho, that you up there talking?”

Heavy clumping footsteps on the stairs announced Arturo, who came into view one step at a time, shiny pate first. Poe followed close behind him, carrying a case of Jack Daniels. 

“How long you been chewing Rey’s ear off?” Arturo joked, reaching up to pat Chuy on the back.

Chuy looked thoughtful. “Longer than I talked to anyone in a long time.” He nodded formally at Poe. “Leopoldo. Que tal?”

Poe plunked the case of liquor down behind the bar and put his hands on his hips.

“My name is Poe, viejo.”

“¿Y así te llama tu mamá?” retorted Chuy.

“Do you know mi mamá?”

“Yeah. Sara Bey Dameron. Lives in Everett.” He leaned forward. “Wants you to call her more often.”

Poe’s eyes popped. “¡Mira, cómo quieren todas!”

Chuy shook his shaggy head. “Call her, chamaco. Rey? I think I talked enough for today.” He clapped a hand briefly onto Rey’s shoulder and shuffled away down the stairs. Rey and Poe watched him go. 

“How does he know my mom?” Poe asked indignantly. 

Arturo waved a hand. “He and Leia know everybody. I’ve stopped asking questions.”

Rey scooped up her long-forgotten electrical tools and her phone and started to walk away. “I should get back to work, too.”

“Well, okay, then,” Poe called. “Bye.”

Arturo looked puzzled, but he made no move to intervene.

Rey dumped her kit in the green room and half-ran out the back door. She leaned against the wall in the alleyway, alone, with her head between her knees, her gasping breath frothing up plumes of steam in the cold air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you imagine Black Veil Brides' [Andy Biersack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3Wi8bOh6j4) singing Billy Joel's ["A Room of Our Own," ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDZdNz7Wg0Y&ab_channel=billyjoelVEVO)you have a good idea of what the Nights' first song should sound like. And the second, of course, is [Juanes. Heckle me and write your own liner notes in the comments.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3eqAxYPkmA&ab_channel=JuanesVEVO)


	10. Attenuation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added a Slow Burn tag, because holy heck you people are patient. In other news, Rey is not taking things very well, and may or may not have terrible roommate etiquette.

**January 9th. Allston. The Cantina. Around 3:30 p.m.**

“Jesus, that’s a lot to process,” said Finn.

Rey crunched down on another colossal handful of nachos, nodding morosely. 

“Have you talked to Han about it? Or Leia?”

Rey rolled her eyes theatrically as her cheeks bulged with rubbery tortilla chips. 

“I don’t know what to say. He was starting to sound like a good guy until you got to that part.” Finn leaned back and took a swig of beer. “I can’t believe Kylo Ren is your bosses’ kid.” He narrowed his eyes. “Wait, so Ben’s his real name?”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head balefully. “Weird. Makes him sound like such a normal dude.”

“I mean, he kind of is.” Rey wasn’t sure why her voice came out sounding so defensive. “More normal than some people I’ve dated. Speaking of, enough about me, we talked about the tour, now you’re back, how was your coffee date yesterday?”

Finn looked skeptical at the abrupt change of subject, but evidently decided to let it go. “Your boy Poe is a _lot._ ”

“That’s part of his charm. But did you two get along?”

He paused. “I think we did.”

Rey smiled wolfishly into her next fistful of nachos. “Yeah?”

“Not like that.” He waved a hand. “Still taking it slow. But underneath all the sassmaster attitude he’s an interesting guy. He’s teaching himself how to play the piano right now.”

“Wouldn’ta guessed that.”

“Me neither. We’re gonna go dancing next weekend. I’ll let you know how it goes. And Rey?” He leaned forward. “Please don’t just live vicariously through my dating life. Maybe this dumbass ghosted you, but you should really get back out there.” He punctuated this advice by crunching down on a handful of chips and lettuce. 

Rey held back from asking where “out there” was, anyway. 

“I know, I promise I will. I downloaded Bumble again yesterday.”

“That’s good, that’s good. You want the last bit of sour cream?”

“No, thanks. And you can have all the olives.”

“Oh, I know it.”

A gust of cold air rushed past their booth as the restaurant doors opened. 

“Hey, Cara.” Finn raised a hand. The weathered bartender waved back, on her way in for the start of her evening shift. 

She strode over to Rey and Finn’s table. “Hey guys, how’s it going?”

“Boy troubles,” Finn said. Rey huffed in disgust.

“Boy troubles, huh?” Cara Dune raised one dark eyebrow in a femme-fatale moue and then grinned. 

“Rey kinda accidentally dated the boss’ son without knowing it,” Finn chuckled.

The smile slid off Cara’s face.

“You dated Ben Solo?”

“Holy crap, I did not think this was such a small town.” Rey threw up her hands. “How do you know that?” 

The Cantina’s bartender leaned forward. “Rey, I’ve worked across the street from Endor for thirty years. Han Solo has been banned from this bar since 1987. And Leia and I are from the same town in Texas. So we kinda go way back.”

Rey rubbed hand across the tension headache forming under her left temple.

“Actually, I used to babysit Ben,” added Cara reflectively. “When he was real little. Back when Chuy and I were still going out.”

Finn choked loudly on a chunk of olive.

Cara smirked. “Don’t worry about it, you were probably still in diapers. We’re good friends now.”

“Cara, Leia and Han don’t know Ben and I had a...thing. Chuy does,” Rey added hastily. “I’m trying to figure it all out and plan how I maybe tell them.”

“Maybe?” Cara crossed her arms. “Rey, they haven’t heard from that kid in more than ten years. It won’t be a pretty conversation, but deep down I know Leia will want to know how he’s doing and what he’s up to. And you’re not dumb. If you saw something in him he must be an okay guy.”

Rey stared glumly at the table. “Yeah, I thought so.”

“Can I ask what happened?”

Not for the first time, Rey mentally grasped for a way to make the story more interesting. More meaningful than it felt, a scant handful of months later. “He just...ghosted me. I think he found out I knew his parents and couldn’t handle it.”

Cara did a poor job of hiding her disappointed scorn. “Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s whatever.”

 _No it’s not!_ screamed the treacherous part of her brain. 

They made small talk for a few minutes before Cara left to start her shift behind the bar. Rey and Finn were counting out bills for the check when a funny look crossed Finn’s face. He looked at her sideways as he tugged a mango-colored fleece beanie over his crest of locs. 

“You know, I can’t help thinking about how through this whole ordeal with Kylo Ren, you only got to see each other in person that one time. Well, two. Actually--three. But only the one time when things were going good and you actually liked each other.”

“So?” Rey immediately regretted how belligerent she sounded.

The last of the weak winter sunlight was being swallowed up by the line of brick apartment buildings on the horizon as the door to the Cantina clanged behind them.

“So, maybe if there’s an opportunity to talk things out in person one last time, you should take it.”

Rey balked.“What, like, closure? I don’t know if I want that. And I don’t even know where he is right now, geographically.”

Finn looked at her shrewdly. “He still on tour?” Rey nodded. “Where’s the next leg?”

“They’re ending in New York or Connecticut or something in February or March. Somewhere on the East Coast.”  
“That’s not that far. Jannah’s cousin lives in the Bronx. You could stay with her and have yourself a nice weekend trip even if shit goes down. Or if shit...doesn’t go down. Just a thought.”

Finn let her noncommittal silence rest. They ambled down the sidewalk, cold hands stuffed deep into pockets. The green subway creaked by with the forced cheeriness of its double-clang bell. 

“Rey.” She looked up. “Don’t let this guy get inside your head. You deserve better than that. I was just suggesting it ‘cause it sounded like you were really...invested. In the beginning.”

“I think I was,” she said in a small voice. “He just decided to be a butthead.”

Finn chuckled gently. “People do that sometimes. Especially guys who don’t know how to talk to cute girls.”

“Thanks,” Rey replied halfheartedly. “Well. I think I’m going to head home and catch a nap before work tonight. See you tomorrow morning for pancakes?”

“For sure.” Finn engulfed her in a bear hug. “Bye, boo.”

“Bye.” 

Rey zipped up her jacket to begin the trudge home through the darkening streets. The passing buildings registered by sound and smell more than by sight: Chinese grocery, laundromat, hookah bar, barbecue joint, another laundromat, shawarma. She dodged a knot of cackling college students at the corner and clumped up her apartment’s porch steps. 

A fastidious pink sticky note greeted her when she dropped her keys onto the kitchen counter. 

_Hi Rey, I’m on a date with Brian tonite and probably won’t be home. You can have the leftover chicken salad if you want it. Thanks! Kaydel._

Rey pulled the tupperware of creamy chunks out of the refrigerator and inspected it dubiously with a fork. She pressed play on the battered CD player perched on top of the fridge and doodled on the back of the sticky note while she chewed a few bites and Blizzard of Ozz blared in the background. 

_Mr. Crowley  
What went on in your head?  
Oh, Mr. Crowley  
Did you talk to the dead?_

_Your lifestyle to me seems so tragic  
With the thrill of it all  
You fooled all the people with magic  
Yeah, you waited on Satan's call_

_Mr. Charming  
Did you think you were pure?..._

Ozzy Osbourne was halfway through the third verse when Rey realized the crescent squiggles on the paper looked suspiciously like the Nights of Ren logo. 

She lit one of Kaydel’s pumpkin spice candles, set the sticky note on fire, and grimly watched it crumple into ash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I wanna know what you meant.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3LvhdFEOqs)


	11. Blind Plotting

**February 11th. 8 p.m. on a Thursday.**

Rey rolled a foam earplug between her fingers and jammed it back into one ear. Over the accordion solo, no one could hear her groan.

A trio of musicians in rubber horse masks bobbed and stomped onstage. Red Bucket In Disguise Zydeco Fusion Extravaganza had been a bad booking decision even before they ran out of E’s for the marquee. It was a small mercy that their minimal tech setup required nothing from Rey except to loiter backstage, listening to Arturo muttering darkly in her earpiece. 

Han’s financial desperation was showing. The long gaps between bookings in the fall had been frantically replaced by greenhorn DJs, strange experimental rock groups, and one gloomy, sparsely attended drag brunch. Anything to keep the lights on.

The lights, this particular evening, were a flat yellowish wash and a single strobe effect. Rey wrinkled her nose in distaste. 

Undoing several years of stage crew training, she slipped into the shadows close to the wall and pulled up Instagram. 

_Ugh. For fuck’s sake._

Phasma’s sweaty face looked back at her from the tiny screen, gurning happily next to two grinning taiko drummers she recognized from the Nights of Ren’s touring band. 

_Last night with these guys!! Ready to go home n SLEEP after this tour but first we have to ROCK THE HOUSE #nightsofren_

So the tour was ending this week. 

Rey idly imagined a universe where she and Phasma could be friends without involving Ben. Maybe she lived far, far away from him, in a more remote corner of Oregon, farming kale and drumming on rain barrels at dawn in the middle of her back forty. 

Curiosity stretched awake and scratched in the back of her brain. 

Rey searched for the Night’s website and clicked onto their tour page. 

She scrolled all the way to the end of the five months of concert listings and squinted at the last line. 

_The Citadel Ballroom, Conway, NH._

Rey stared at the screen. 

If she left now, she could be there by intermission.

\--

Chuy and Arturo looked up from the desk in the ticket office at the sound of the front door banging open and smashing against the wall.

Rey dashed in front of the ticket window, breathless.

“Chuy, could I borrow your car tonight if you’re not using it? Someone I still know in New Hampshire had a medical emergency, and they don’t have anybody to be with them at the hospital, and if I leave now I can probably see her before she might have to go into surgery, and--”

“Conway, right?” asked Chuy.

Rey blinked.

“Well, Jakku, is, where I’m from, but--but they probably took her to Conway since that’s the closest hospital, and--”

Chuy and Arturo gazed at her levelly.

The lie died in her throat.

Chuy sighed. 

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a single sheet of paper, fastidiously folded into small squares. He unfurled it to reveal a copy of the Nights of Ren’s tour schedule, clearly run off on Endor’s forever-slightly-pink office printer. 

“I’ve been keeping tabs on him, too, Rey.” 

She swallowed around the sudden lump behind her larynx, and Chuy smiled kindly at her. Arturo raised his eyebrows at both of them, looking back and forth between their moistening faces.

The shaggy bouncer unhooked a fearsome set of keys from his wallet chain and tossed them through the ticket window. 

“Go. Be safe. I’ll pack up after the show. We’ll only tell Han and Leia where you went if you don’t show up tomorrow.”

Rey leaned in through the opening to throw her arms around his neck in a hug.

“Thank you!”

“Go get ‘em, baby girl!” yelled Arturo as she sprinted down the hallway and banged out through the door.

He turned slowly back to Chuy, who was carefully folding his printout and stowing it away in his vest for safekeeping.

“Dude, you are the sappiest motherfucker I have ever met. Also, you wanna tell me what the hell just happened?” 

“Déjalo,” muttered Chuy, wiping a tear on the back of one hairy hand. “I just hope he wants to see her when she gets there.”

\--

Freed from the I-93 on-ramp, Chuy’s ancient Nissan Pulsar roared in protest as Rey ground it from third to fourth gear and merged into the passing lane. The car had a sticky spot (and not the one in the cupholder, which she suspected was either hashish or candle wax) between 45 and 50, which Rey calculated wouldn’t bother her if she gunned it and stayed above eighty the whole way. 

She was facing down two hours of highway with nothing to listen to but indifferent classic rock radio and the blare of Ben’s voice singing in her brain. The pathetic puppy-dog expression she’d last seen on his face floated in the wintry darkness in front of her. 

_Hey Ben, I’m angry at you, but I’m willing to talk._

_Hi Ben, you have some things to answer for._

_Hey _fucker,_ why don’t you tell me why you can’t answer a text, you coward?_

Rey found herself yelling out loud and flipping off a passing minivan before she gave up and decided to improv her impassioned speech when she got there. 

Her brain had drained of anything but adrenaline anyway.

The Pulsar scraped over a pothole and shuddered on its nonexistent suspension when she finally bumped into the parking lot. 

The Citadel was exactly as she remembered it: paneled, squat, hulking. It crouched in the middle of a slew of dented pickups and Springsteen-era muscle cars. 

The thought slapped against the forefront of Rey’s mind as she reached out for the door handle that the Nights’ show might already be sold out. 

“Ticket and ID, please?” asked the bouncer in a gravelly voice. Rey was about to demur and walk back into the lot when he raised his flashlight and squinted into her face.

“Wait a minute, you look familiar.” His close-cropped hair and beard were whiter than she remembered, but Rey recognized his craggy features.

“Loren?”

“Rey!” The old bouncer broke into a smile. “How are ya? I haven’t seen you around here in years. Where’s Finn?”

“Good. How are you? Uh, Boston. He’s got his own band now,” Rey groped through the red mist in her mind. “Actually, I live there, too. But, I thought I’d come back for this show.”

“Well, it’s good to see you,” said Loren. “I don’t even need to catch you sneaking in these days.”

Rey’s stomach shriveled. She smiled weakly. “Yeah, I still feel bad about that one. It’s good to see you too, Loren.”

He laughed heartily. “No hard feelings, I was doing it when you were still a twinkle in someone’s eye and all that. Looks like you grew out of it like the rest of us.”

“Rey Randall?” 

She glanced behind Loren, to where a slim young man hovered quizzically next to a Nights of Ren merch table. 

“Um. Yes?”

“I’m Danny Mitaka. I’m with the Nights of Ren’s management. Uh.” He ran a hand through his dark hair. “This is gonna sound real weird, but Phasma gave me your photo and told me to look for you at the show tonight. Are you her girlfriend?”

Rey smiled awkwardly at Loren as he gave her a knowing wink.

“Ah, no, we’re just...friends, but. I guess you could say I’m...here for...Kylo Ren. I guess.”

“Oh!” Danny beamed. “That makes a lot more sense. She said to tell her and Hux, but not him, so I guess you’re a happy surprise.” 

“Well, I guess I don’t need that ticket of yours after all.” Loren handed Rey a wristband and saluted at Danny. “You take good care of this young lady. Her and I go way back.”

Rey gave him a grateful smile as a flourish of guitar notes started up in the concert hall and Danny began to hurry off down the hallway. “I’ll tell Finn you said hi. You should really check out the Resistance if you can make it to a show.”

“Resistance? I’ll look him up. And I’m taking your word you’re over 21 this time.” He grinned.

“Promise!” called Rey over the sound of the band starting up.

Loren waved as she and Danny pushed through the doors.

“Glad you made it, Rey,” yelled Danny, popping in a set of green foam earplugs. “I have to go back to the merch table, but did you want to go backstage?”

“No,” said Rey. “I’ll just catch the second half from out here.”

“Okay.” He gave her a thumbs up and walked off back to his post.

The curling tendrils of the “Freaks Like You” guitar hook began to twist around the back of her neck, and Rey, shivering, turned toward the stage.

The Nights’ sound was just as polished as when Rey had seen them at Corellia, but fuller, more complex. They stood in the same setup, Phasma-Kylo-Ren-Hux, from house left to right; wore the same black leather ensembles; even the same bandana tied back Hux’s ginger waves. The backup band seemed tighter than they had been during the livestream from San Antonio.

She noted with a heavy, ironic pleasure that there was more red in the lighting design this time. 

Phasma was reigning over an impressive auxiliary percussion setup, with two taiko drummers in hachimaki hammering away at their gigantic instruments. Drips of sweat flew off the tips of her mohawk when she hammered individual blows on the snare. 

Ben, when Rey finally admitted she had been avoiding looking at him, appeared curiously vacant. 

His fingers were technically perfect, executing complex runs over the strings of his cherry-red Gibson, but his eyes were somewhere in the rafters. Rey’s finely attuned ears picked up the tiniest bit of vocal fry around the edges of his voice.

He crossed, and a footlight silvered the crags of his face and threw violet shadows into his eye sockets. He was beautiful in chiaroscuro, like some half-remembered painting of a saint.

Without warning, a dozen songs had gone by and the crowd was bellowing around her. 

Rey gripped Chuy’s car keys in one shaking hand and resisted the urge to bolt for the parking lot.

Rather than go backstage, she loitered aimlessly in the hall as the crowd bled out. Rey dodged maintenance workers pushing piles of plastic cups across the floor, and the house manager rolling up cables. She eventually drifted like flotsam to a spot near the front of the stage. 

After a few minutes, Phasma bounded out and began breaking down the drum kit.

“Hey, Bri.” She looked up.

“Rey! I’m so glad you made it!” 

“How did you know I would be here?” retorted Rey hollowly. 

Phasma grinned. “I had a hunch.” She walked across the stage and hopped to the floor.

“In all seriousness, thank you for coming.” She splayed one hand over her broad chest. “It means a lot to me, and I’m sure it will mean a lot to Ben.”

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” said Rey flatly. 

“No, but--” a resounding crash came from a few feet away, and they both glanced up.

Ben Solo stood onstage straddling a toppled mic stand. 

His hair stuck up in improbable directions, and his stage makeup was smeared in the clear outline of a handprint across one eyebrow. 

Rey wanted to feel satisfied by his look of blind, cornered panic, but she was a little too worried she was mirroring it. 

“Goddamn, you’re a good wingman,” she muttered to Phasma, who simply nodded.  
“I’ll be outside,” Rey barked, and turned on her heel to walk out.

\---

Ben and Phasma watched her go until the door banged shut and the thump of her boots echoed down the hallway.

“What the hell is she doing here?” 

“Coming to our show,” answered Phasma nonchalantly.

“Bri, did you--”

“Nope. Scout’s honor. I got Danny to comp her a ticket, but she came on her own.”

“Jesus fucking christ.” Ben buried his face in his hands, smearing off the other eyebrow. “Why?”

“For fuck’s sake, do I really have to spell it out for you?” Phasma burst out. “She wants you to try again. Now go wash your face and fucking...try. Hux and I’ll get your equipment loaded.”

Ben stood helplessly rooted to the spot. Absurdly, he made an effort to right and straighten the mic stand before an approaching roadie took it out of his hands and slotted it into a wheeled bin.

“Ben!”

“Alright! But just--”

“Running out of time, buddy.” Phasma shook her silvery head.

Ben growled incoherently at her before running flat-out toward the green room.

Phasma was waiting for him when he crashed through the front doors into the frozen parking lot. 

She was watching Rey stare at the sky on the other side, her chin hunched into the folds of her black scarf. Ben stood, transfixed.

“Go.” Phasma jerked her head at him. “Or she disappears forever.”

He took a deep breath and strode into the night. 

Rey looked up when she heard him coming toward her. 

“Hi, Rey. ”

“Hi.” 

“Thanks for coming.”

She stared at him. 

“Do you want to..talk for a few minutes?”

“We can do that.” She shivered. “When do you have to get back on the bus?”

“I...don’t. The tour is over. I...don’t have anywhere to go.” He finished lamely. 

“Don’t you have a flight back to Oregon?”

“Not until Wednesday.”

“You guys don’t throw some epic, end-of-tour party?”

“You kidding? We’re all exhausted.”

The wind soughed in the trees, shaking the lights arcing over the parking lot and biting into their winter coats. Rey reached into her pocket and pulled out an orange bobble hat. 

“Well--” she began, shoving it onto her head, when an engine roared to life across the lot. Hux stood in the checkerboard of light coming from the tour bus windows. 

“Hey Ben!” he yelled. “We’re headed back to the hotel!”

“Shit!” Ben turned from Rey to Hux and back again, stricken. She rolled her eyes.

“I’m not coming!”

Rey wondered if Hux could see her double take. 

“‘Kay.” He shrugged and climbed onto the bus.

Ben turned to her again with a frighteningly earnest look in his eyes. “Rey, this is too important. I’ll get a ride there somehow.”

Her practical side took over.

“This is rural New Hampshire,” she snapped at him. “You think you can find an Uber?”

“It’s only four miles. I can walk.”

“We’re in the mountains, and there are literally bears. And moose. Are you insane?”

“Fine, then, I bet I can hitchhike.”

“Who is going to pick you up? You look terrifying!”

“Well, I didn’t think I looked that bad.” Ben raised an eyebrow. 

Rey’s heart lurched with the immediate, stabbing thought that she had never noticed how much he looked like Han. 

He sighed. “Sorry, not helpful. I guess...I hate to ask this, but would you be willing to give me a ride?” 

She looked around the emptying lot, the knitted ball on her hat bouncing. 

“Yes. On one condition.”

Ben nodded anxiously.

“I’m going to call someone, and tell him where I am. And if I don’t call him again in a couple of hours, he is going to steal a car and come down like a fucking bat out of raging, fiery hell on whatever bear-infested tree-lined ditch you are dragging my body into and murder your ass.”

Ben licked his lips.

“Good idea.”

Rey pulled out her phone, and hit the only number on her speed dial.

“Hey, Rey, what’s up?”

Finn’s voice came out in a digital fuzz. The signal was weak this far north.

“Hey Finn. I’m going to hang out with someone, and I’m outside the Citadel Ballroom--”

“The Citadel in Conway? What are you doing up there?!”

Rey brought the phone back to her ear from where she had jerked it away at Finn’s squawk.

“Went to a concert. But, this guy and I are going to go get a drink or something, and I want you to call me again in a couple of hours if I don’t call you first. I know it’s late. Do you have to be up early tomorrow?”

“Doesn’t matter. Are you okay? You feel safe, and everything?”

“Yeah.” Rey looked at Ben, waiting patiently beside her with his hands clasped.

“What’s this dude’s name?”

“Ben. You want his phone number?”

Ben watched her soft lips form a string of numbers.

_She has it memorized._

Finn blew a breath out through his nose. The phone crackled. “If you’re sure you’re okay, Rey, I’ll talk to you in a couple hours.”

“Okay, Finn. Love you.”

“Love you too. --Hey, is that old dude Loren still taking tickets at the ballroom?”

“Yeah. He’s mellowed out a little bit, though. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.”

“Wait, I didn’t ask--what show’d you see?”

Rey winced. “Nights of Ren.”

Ben watched her hold the phone away from her ear again, as an indignant string of swears buzzed out of the speakers. 

“Finn. It’s okay. Yes, it’s that Ben. I know, I know, I should have led with that. Yes, that’s his real name. No, he’s not like that in person. I promise. You’ve literally met his mom and dad, remember? I didn’t see it before, but he’s more like him than I could possibly tell you right now. If anything happens to me you and Han can come up here and rip shit together.”

_Someday, somewhere, this recording will be played for me in hell,_ Ben thought. 

“Finn--Finn--” the outraged murmur continued. “I promise I am going to be okay. I. Promise. He knows you have his number. He’s standing right next to me.” 

Their eyes met for a fleeting second. 

Rey’s brow furrowed as Finn kept talking. Unexpectedly, she laughed. 

“Then I’ll kick the shit out of him.” 

Ben stood mutely as she said goodbye and hung up. 

“Rey?” he said tentatively. 

“What?” 

“What if we go someplace that’s closer to where you live. I can find a hotel to crash in or something and figure it out in the morning. I think...Manchester is about halfway?” 

She chewed her lower lip. “Okay. Where do you have to be tomorrow?” 

“I’m gonna get a bus to Boston.” 

Rey thought for a minute. 

“How ‘bout I just drive you there?” 

“It’s two and a half hours.” 

“Not the way I drive.” 

Ben gaped at her for a moment. “If you want. Are--are you okay being in the car with me for that long?” 

“I think we need it.” 

He nodded dumbly. “Yeah, we do need to talk.” 

“M’kay then. I parked over there.” She jerked her head and started to walk. 

They crossed the parking lot in silence except for the dirty, frozen slush crunching underfoot. A funny look crossed Ben’s face when they arrived at the Pulsar. 

“God, I remember this car.” 

Rey blinked at him. 

“This was my ride home from peewee soccer practice every week when I was eight. Is there still surfboard wax in the cupholder?” 

“ _That’s_ what that is.” 

“Yeah. You can also use it to wax your sled in the winter. Goes faster.” 

“You had a sled? Lucky you. I only had pizza boxes. And a cafeteria tray once.” 

The car doors clunked shut as Rey slid behind the wheel and Ben carefully folded himself into the passenger’s seat, banging his head on the sagging ceiling with a soft curse. 

The silence recrystallized. 

After a beat Rey gave up and started the engine. 

“You want the radio on?” 

“No thanks. My ears are still ringing.” 

“Oh, right.” She paused awkwardly and turned out of the parking lot onto the silent, pine-lined interstate. “You guys did play a good show.” 

“Thanks.” Ben fidgeted, his leather jacket bunching around him in the narrow seat. Static electricity dragged a few crackling tendrils of his black hair to the ceiling, where they floated like seaweed. “I’m sorry, I probably smell after playing for two hours.” 

Rey considered the overpowering cloud of sandalwood and masculine heat rolling off him and fogging up both her brain and the windshield. 

“No, you’re fine,” she mumbled weakly. 

Ben sighed. “I, uh, I’m grateful you came. To the show. All things considered.” 

Rey sucked her teeth. “I don’t know how the hell your pal Phasma knew I would.” 

Ben gave a short laugh, wincing. “I may have been talking to her about you. A lot. Over the past few months.” 

Rey whipped around to look at him and realized just in time that she was entering an exit ramp. 

He gripped the door handle as she swerved back between the lines and shrugged lamely. “She’s perceptive.” 

Rey didn’t bother waiting for him to go on. “Did she give you some advice about what a shithead you’ve been?” Ben blinked in surprise. “Sorry.” 

“No, you’re right.” He sighed again. “She did do that. And I was. And...I’m sorry. That I didn’t tell you who my family was. That I disappeared instead of trying to confront that. That I sacrificed this, thing, we had, instead of trying to talk about it.” 

“You could call it a friendship.” Rey’s voice was barely audible as the car ground up to sixty. 

Ben paused for a heart-rendingly long moment. 

“It felt like it was going to be more than that.” 

Rey said nothing. 

“But, I know. I fucked it up, and I didn’t give it a chance.” He spread his huge hands, eclipsing her side mirror and part of the windshield. “And maybe you wouldn’t have wanted that anyway, friendship is good, too--Did you?” 

His voice swelled, decrescendoed, and almost died on the last two words. 

Rey drove in silence. 

“Yeah.” 

“What?” 

“ _Yes._ ” She glared at him quickly and pinned her eyes back on the road. “Are you kidding? You wrote me a fucking love song! At dawn! On a bus! When did you even learn how to play the ukulele?” 

“From my dad. But that’s not important.” He swiveled violently in the tiny car seat, and Rey could feel his huge dark eyes boring into her. 

“Believe it or not, I didn’t even know that was a love song when I was recording it. You just--made me realize it. After the fact. I mean, who the hell likes Fountains of Wayne that much, anyway?” 

“Me!” 

“You! And me! And, what the hell, Rey, I--” His back thumped against the passenger seat. His next words came out muffled through his fingers. 

“I’ve never done anything like that before.” 

Rey couldn’t suppress a vain, ironic smile. “You ever ghosted on anyone like that before, either?” 

“No. And I promise you, Rey, I never will again.” 

She punched on the defroster button. The whoosh of air began to slowly leach away the fog on the windshield. It was going to be a long two hours. 

When she glanced over at Ben, after a long moment, his hands were folded in his lap, his head tilted back against the headrest. His eyes were closed. The flicker of lights on the road revealed dark circles of dehydration and fatigue under his eyes. 

Something glittered in the long lashes brushing his cheeks. 

“I know I probably don’t deserve any more second chances. But I also know that you’re stronger than I am, and that you let me get into your car for a reason. I don’t know what that is, but I would appreciate it if you would give me a chance to win your trust back.” 

He opened his eyes. 

“Please.” 

Rey focused hard on the dotted line blipping on the road in front of her. 

“Okay.” 

Ben let out a long, shaky breath. 

They watched the trees pass in silence for a few miles. 

“I really _don’t_ know why you let me in your car.”

“Beats driving home alone.” 

He laughed in a way that was half a sob. 

“Do you want me to drive part of the way?” 

“No, I wouldn’t make anyone drive this thing. It’s junk. I can’t believe it can still turn corners.” 

“Chuy did always drive like a maniac.” 

Rey smirked reluctantly. “Did he?” 

“Oh my god, yeah. I used to go airborne when we came over that hill at Corey Park…” he trailed off. 

Silence fell for another long minute. 

“I go there sometimes, now.” 

“Hm?” 

“The park you took me to. It’s really pretty at sunset.” She straightened up in her seat and gripped the wheel tighter. “Maybe we could...go for a walk again sometime. Go see some more of those secret paths.” 

He nodded. 

“How long are you going to be here, exactly?” Rey added in a rush. “What are you doing now that the tour’s over?” 

“Christ, I don’t know.” Ben stared blankly at the highway. “I don’t even know where I’m staying tonight. I didn’t really expect to be on the way into town. Should probably call up Lan.” He hiked his hips up to pull a gleaming new phone in a sturdy protective case out of his back pocket. 

Rey connected the dots. “Lan Calrissian Junior is the friend of yours who lives in Beacon Hill, isn’t he?” 

“Yeah. He’s a longtime family friend.” 

“I’ve met him.” 

Ben cocked his head. “That shouldn’t surprise me. Did...Han and Leia...introduce you?” 

“Yeah. To him and Lando Calrissian.” 

Ben’s eyes twinkled. “I miss seeing Lando. He’s something, right?” 

“Holy shit, I had to pick my jaw off the floor. I was coming into work still stuffing my face with breakfast and Leia decided it was a good idea to introduce me to the guy that headlined the March on Washington.” 

Ben’s raucous laugh startled her. “I bet he didn’t care. He’s not formal.” He giggled giddily again. “I remember he and my dad used to play horseshoes in the backyard and trash-talk each other, and then my mom would come out and wipe the floor with them. Every time we had a barbecue. They never learned.” He trailed off. “Do you get along with my--with Leia?” 

“She’s like the cool aunt I never had. And also my mentor? The way she helps the people around her, and she never thinks she’s above getting her hands dirty, or tending bar, or taking the trash out, or doing anything the people who work for her do.” Rey squinted in the high beams of a passing semi. “Your mom’s a very special person, Ben." 

“And your dad--” She went on. “Han is the best boss I’ve ever had, hands down. He’s such a grouch sometimes, but I swear to god he would drop everything and run if I was ever in trouble. And he worries about EVERYTHING. There was one time I cut myself on a sheared-off light clamp, and I tried to bandage it up and keep going, but he wouldn’t let me go back to work until he bundled me into the car and hauled me to the emergency room to get stitches. And I didn’t even need any. And Chuy, and Arturo, and Akbar....it’s weird if I say this to you, because they’re _your_ family, but they’re like my family now.” 

She paused after her torrent of words. Rey slid into the passing lane and merged into a trickle of late-night traffic. 

Ben’s voice was sad and soft when he broke the silence. 

“I think...I might stay for a while...and try to make them my family again, too.” 

When Rey looked over at him after a few minutes of quiet, he had dropped off to sleep, his face slumped against his shoulder. 

His full lips were slack, and a tendril of hair curled across his nose. He looked younger, almost boyish, and unbearably beautiful. 

Rey turned the radio on to a murmuring volume and watched the speedometer needle climb. 

Her watch read ten minutes after two when she flipped on her blinker and cruised onto the ramp marked ALLSTON-BRIGHTON. Ben woke up with a snuffle. 

“Rey...I’m sorry. I fell asleep.” 

“It’s okay. I had the radio.” 

“We didn’t get to talk much.” 

“Well.” She shifted her back in the seat. “If you’re staying, we can meet up and talk more. Did you mean that?” 

“Yeah,” he answered quietly. “I did.” 

“Lan text you back?” 

He checked his phone. “I can’t get ahold of him. Just...drop me at the Holiday Inn on St. Paul street?” 

A thickened and palpable dread filled the car as Rey made the few turns to the hotel. She clunked to a stop along the curb and hauled on the parking brake, but left the engine on. 

Ben watched Rey rub her eyes and pull off the orange fluffy hat. A single wisp of hair stuck out of her bun and flopped sideways across the top of her forehead. 

“Look, Ben, I have a roommate, but we have a couch. I think it’s big enough for you. You want it?” 

His stomach flipped with rapture over a couch. Rey’s couch. A couch near Rey in Rey’s house. It could be filled with an entire circus of fleas and he couldn’t possibly care. But she had said _I have partial custody of a couch_ , not, _stay with me_. He swallowed heavily. 

“Rey, you don’t have to do that, I--” 

“I know.” 

She stared at him defiantly. The acidic green of the hotel sign lit up the freckles spangled across her nose. 

“It wouldn’t be...weird? After I said I had feelings for you.” 

“You didn’t, really. Not in those words.” Rey kept looking at him. 

“I do.” 

The Pulsar’s engine revved once, coughed, rattled, and died. 

They gazed at each other in the sudden stillness. 

“I should check that--” 

“Are we out of gas? Here--" 

They popped out of the doors simultaneously and rushed the hood, where Rey collided face-first into the cold front of Ben’s leather jacket. He caught her deftly by the arms. 

He smiled down at her. “At least you weren’t holding a coffee this time.” 

The air whuffed out of him as Rey threw her arms around his middle and squeezed. 

Slowly, uncertainly, Ben folded his arms around her shoulders. 

“Sorry.” Her voice was muffled. “That was kind of impulsive.” 

“It’s been a pretty impulsive night for both of us.” He leaned his cheek on the silk of her hair. “I’m okay with it.” 

They breathed together for a moment. _Five seconds in. Five seconds out._

_You can do this._

Reluctantly, Rey pulled away. 

“In case you were wondering, I’ve been wondering what it’s like to hug you. And maybe I’m relieved that we got back here and didn’t blow up at each other and I’m not dead in a ditch in New Hampshire being eaten by bears.” 

“Do they really eat dead bodies?” 

“Probably.” Rey popped the hood of the car. The engine was smoking lazily and ticking in the cold air. 

“Do you know what’s wrong with it?” 

“I’m wondering if it’s worth the price of a parking ticket to find out tomorrow.” 

Ben put his hands on his hips. “That’s gonna be a real bitch of a parking ticket. We _are_ in Brookline.” _Five seconds in._ “But I will happily pay it instead of a hotel bill.” 

“This is a safe spot to leave it for the--god--four? hours until daylight.” Rey waved a hand up the street. “My apartment’s only a twenty-minute walk that way." 

_Five seconds out._

“Then maybe we come get it for Chuy tomorrow.” 

As they started walking, Ben wondered crazily whether he should suggest going to Corey Hill to see the sunrise. But his fingers were already starting to freeze in his pockets, and Rey had stuffed her bobble hat back onto her head. 

“Should you call Finn?” 

“Oh, shit, you’re right.” She pulled out her phone and poked the screen. Ben heard Finn answer, muffled against Rey’s face. 

“Hey, I’m back in Allston. Thanks for staying up for me." 

The snow was absent here. Ben trudged along the sidewalk, feeling jittery after his nap. 

_Five seconds in._

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t mean to scare you. But it turned out okay.” She glanced up at Ben. “Yeah. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Right now I’m pretty wired and need to try to calm down and get some sleep, okay?” 

Another murmur from Finn, and she said goodbye and tucked the phone back into her pocket. 

They came up short on a crosswalk where a few cars still trundled past, and Rey punched the button. 

_Five seconds out._

Ben reached out and enfolded her in a hug that was both more tentative and more solid than the last. 

Rey nestled her face against his chest with a breath. He marveled at how her head tucked so snugly into the hollow of his neck. Her small feet slipped between his own, and her warm thighs pressed into the front of his legs. 

The blood began to sing in his head. 

Rey untucked her head to press her lips softly into his, and Ben left the world for a moment. 


End file.
